Well, there are a couple ways to do it. Here are three:

• System calls to `ls' and `grep' (like you did).
• Perl's internal system calls to list files and grep the lists.
• Use File::Find at the top of a directory tree and look for *.mp3.

Out of these three, I would definitely recommend File::Find. There is the least chance of something going horribly, horribly wrong. :-) You should read the File::Find manpage, but since you are a self-proclaimed newbie, I'll give you an example!

#!/usr/bin/perl

# enable strict syntax checking and warnings
# you should (pretty much) always use these
use strict;
use warnings 'all';

# include our friendly neighborhood file finder
use File::Find;

sub list_mp3 {
    # our regex to check for the .mp3 extension
    /.*?\.mp3$/ && do {
 
    # but we're not done yet!
    # this `do' block will perform any voodoo and output
    # you want on files that match the above regex

    # here's a real simple output:
    print $File::Find::name, "\n";

    # See the File::Find manpage for the different variables to use.
    # You can obviously dress the output up a lot more than this.

    } # end the do-block
} # end the subroutine

# finddepth() is a function from File::Find
# we have to tell it A) what function to use, and
#                    B) where to start searching
#
# this will start at /hd/mp3 and search downward, passing
# each file to the list_mp3 function above

finddepth(\&list_mp3, '/HD/MP3');
[download]

If you need me to clarify anything, just holler. Hopefully this will be enough to get you started!

Alakaboo

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