file::find subroutine not getting new values

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

Fellow Perlmonks,

Updated
Ok, so does anyone have any other suggestions for -
if finding a file recursively doesn't exist, create it.
if it does exist, move on.

Trying to put together some code that looks for a file matching a pattern, and if it doesn't exist, creates it with the content stored in a variable. The &wanted sub below does a pattern search as /$currentstoryid/. The problem is it keeps looking for the same $currentstoryid. Never gets updated by the foreach loop, like it's some kind of private variable that gets stuck. Any ideas? Any help is appreciated.

ILC

if (my @entries = $html->content =~ /<h2><a href="\/entry.*?<br \/>\s+
+?<br \/>/gs) {
    @entries = reverse @entries;                              
    foreach my $entry (@entries) {                            
        $entry =~ /<h2><a href="\/entry\/(\d+)\/"/;           
        my $currentstoryid = $1;                              
        my $exists;                                           
        &find(\&wanted, $sitedir);
           sub wanted { if (/$currentstoryid/) {                 
           $exists = 1; return $exists; } }
           if ($exists) {                                        
            my $datedir = strftime "%Y/%m/%d", localtime;     
            my $freshentry="$sitedir/$datedir/$currentstoryid.txt";
            print "  Creating ", $freshentry, "\n";           
            system ("mkdir", "-p", "$sitedir/$datedir");      
            open(NEWSTORY, ">> $freshentry");
                print NEWSTORY "<font color=\"#dd3333\">$site</font>\n
+";    
                print NEWSTORY "$entry\n";                      
            close (NEWSTORY);                                 
        }                                                     
    }                                                         
}
[download]

Buddha bless you.

Comment on file::find subroutine not getting new values Download Code

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Re: file::find subroutine not getting new values by sgifford (Prior) on May 18, 2004 at 16:25 UTC
Because you're declaring the `wanted` sub inside an enclosing block containing lexical (`my`) variables, those variables create closures, and when the sub uses these variables, it gets the copies that were in existence when it was first compiled. The next time through the loop, a new variable is created, and the variable in the sub and outside it no longer refer to the same thing. The easiest fix is to not use lexical variables. Declare `$currentstoryid` and `$exists` with `our` instead of `my`, and the problem goes away. Another solution is to create a new anonymous sub for each call to `find`: `my $currentstoryid = $entry; my $exists=0; &find( sub { if (/$currentstoryid/) { $exists = 1; return $exists; } }, $sitedir);` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Re: file::find subroutine not getting new values by ilovechristy (Novice) on May 18, 2004 at 18:45 UTC
Took your anonymous sub advice and it works like a charm. Thanks for everything. -ILC Buddha bless ya'll.	[reply]