I've read in the contents of a directory and I would like to sort them nicely: Subdirectories on top (in alphabetical order) and then files (in alphabetical order). I'm using the following code, which takes a reference to the array containing the directory contents as a parameter:
sub SortDirectory()
{
   my $arrayRef = $_[0];
   my @fileArray;
   my $currIndex = 0;
   my $i;
   for ( $i = 0; $i < @$arrayRef; $i++ )
   {
      if ( (grep /\./, $$arrayRef[$i]) != "" )
      {
         $fileArray[$currIndex++] = splice(@$arrayRef,$i--,1);
      }
   }
   push (@$arrayRef, @fileArray);
}

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This seems to work except for the directories "." and "..", which I would like to appear at the very top of the directory listing (hence, be placed at the beginning of the array). Since I'm just checking for the presence of a "." to determine if the entry is a subdirectory or a file, the directories "." and ".." are considered files as well.

I was wondering if there was a way to have grep search for a wildcard (i.e. look for a "." with any other character immediately after it). That might help me solve the problem. Of course, if someone knows a better way to accomplish what I'm doing, I'm open to suggestions at this point.

Thanks,
- Sherlock

In reply to Using grep with wildcards by Sherlock

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