Hi everyone.

I came across a problem whilst I was writing a module which is basically an extension (subclass) of IO::File. In order for my module to work correctly, I needed to know the name of the file which was requested to be opened. Now, whilst I have successfully subclassed IO::File, I needed a way of ensuring that the filename which is passed to my module was a "well-bahaved" plain file. The method I chose was simply to do a file test on the filename (-f). An example testcase illustrating the problem is shown below.

# ensure the file exists
open FILE, ">testfile.log" || 
        die "Unable to create file: $!";
close FILE;

# test 1
if (! -f "<testfile.log") {
        print STDERR "Not a file <.\n";
        exit;
}

# test 2
if (! -f ">>testfile.log") {
        print STDERR "Not a file >>.\n";
        exit;
}

print "I shouldn't be here.\n";

exit;
__END__

[download]

Whilst this works as I expected on Unix:

Not a file <.

[download]

When I run the same code on ActiveState 5.8 on Windows, I receive the following response:

Not a file >>.

[download]

Which means that "test 1" above returned false. Does anyone know if this is defined behaviour, or a bug?

Also, would anyone like to suggest an alternative approach, or have any pointers to any further info on this?

Thanks for everyone's time.

Cheers,

-- Dave :-)

$q=[split+qr,,,q,~swmi,.$,],+s.$.Em~w^,,.,s,.,$&&$$q[pos],eg,print

In reply to Unexpected file test (-f) result on Windows by DaveH

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