strange File::Find thing?

McMahon has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hello Monks... I nabbed some code from Merlyn: http://www.perlmonks.com/index.pl?node_id=115428 for a Win32 system like so:

{
  my @starters = @ARGV ? @ARGV : 'F:/test';
  @ARGV = ();
  find sub {
  
  if (($_ =~ ".c") or ($_ =~ ".h")) {
  push @ARGV, "$File::Find::dir/$_";
  }
  }, @starters;
}
while (<>) {
...
}
[download]

I assumed that this would populate @ARGV with only filenames, and not top-level directory names. However, subdirectory names are getting into @ARGV somehow:

Can't do inplace edit: F:/test/subdir is not a regular file at script.
+pl line 28
[download]

Can anyone explain to me how those top-level subdirectory names got into @ARGV when I only ever pushed "$File::Find::dir/$_" onto the array? Thanks! -Chris

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Re: strange File::Find thing? by chip (Curate) on Mar 22, 2004 at 20:40 UTC
You forgot to backwhack the dots in your patterns, and to anchor them at the end with a '$'. You're getting everything that contains 'h' or a 'c' (except as the first character). Incidentally, you'll need to double the backwhack and backwhack the '$' unless you use // for the pattern (which is recommended). So you should spell it: `if (/\.c$/ \|\| /\.h$/) { push ... }` BTW, `"$File::Find::dir/$_"` is already available as `$File::Find::name`. -- Chip Salzenberg, Free-Floating Agent of Chaos	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Re: strange File::Find thing? by McMahon (Chaplain) on Mar 22, 2004 at 20:44 UTC
Thanks! I knew that regex looked odd, but I got fixated on the module. Have rearranged both attitude and code properly. -Chris	[reply]
Re: strange File::Find thing? by etcshadow (Priest) on Mar 22, 2004 at 20:38 UTC
It's because File::Find gives you back directories, as well as files, and you don't perform a `-f $_` test to see if it is a file or not you do a regexp like: `$_ =~ ".c"` which isn't doing what you think it is... for example "ac" will match that regular expression... you probably want: `$_ =~ "\\.c"`, or perhaps even just `/\.c/` which will do the same, but be more imediately recognizable. Enjoy. Update: fixed missing (second) backslash in the quotes. `------------ :Wq Not an editor command: Wq` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]