Pass variable as Directory

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

I'm having a problem passing a scalar containing a directory location into an array for loading the files within the directory. When I hard code the directory location into the function, everything works. When I assign the directory to loadup to a scalar, I don't get any files, even though I've confirmed the scalar is holding the correct location.
Is there some reason that you can't pass the location of a directory into an array?

#Works when I assign the directory from a string
my @files = </Library/WebServer/Documents/*.txt>; 

#Does NOT work when I assign the directory from a variable
my $Dir = '/Library/WebServer/Documents/*.txt';
my @files = <$Dir>;

foreach my $item (@files) {
[download]

thanks!

Comment on Pass variable as Directory Download Code

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Re: Pass variable as Directory by Zaxo (Archbishop) on Aug 28, 2005 at 07:31 UTC
davido is exactly right. You can use your $Dir as a filename pattern by saying instead, `my @files = glob $Dir;` After Compline, Zaxo	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: Pass variable as Directory by ecuguru (Monk) on Aug 29, 2005 at 05:56 UTC
Works. Works perfect. Many thanks guys.	[reply]
Re: Pass variable as Directory by davido (Cardinal) on Aug 28, 2005 at 07:27 UTC
Here's the relevant section of perlop: If what's within the angle brackets is neither a filehandle nor a simple scalar variable containing a filehandle name, typeglob, or typeglob reference, it is interpreted as a filename pattern to be globbed, and either a list of filenames or the next filename in the list is returned, depending on context. This distinction is determined on syntactic grounds alone. That means `<$x>` is always a `readline()` from an indirect handle, but `<$hash{key}>` is always a `glob()`. That's because $x is a simple scalar variable, but $hash{key} is not--it's a hash element. One level of double-quote interpretation is done first, but you can't say `<$foo>` because that's an indirect filehandle as explained in the previous paragraph. (In older versions of Perl, programmers would insert curly brackets to force interpretation as a filename glob: `<${foo}>` . These days, it's considered cleaner to call the internal function directly as `glob($foo)`, which is probably the right way to have done it in the first place.) Dave	[reply] [d/l] [select]