C:\> for %f in (test\*.txt) do youprogram.exe %f
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Another way to list all the files in a directory is with glob. It might be a good idea to filter that list so that only regular files are taken.

my @files = grep { -f } glob '/path/to/files/*';

for my $file (@files) {
    my $output = `/path/to/parser.exe $file`;
    # do stuff with $output
}
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System programs can also be launched with system, open, or fork-exec. Which you choose depends on what you want to do with them.

On the face of it your syntax is fine. Is parser.exe on the search path or in teh current directory?

As a test you may care to try `notepad.exe` instead.

You can iterate over the files in a folder like this:

use strict;
use warnings;

my $scan;

opendir $scan, '.';

while (my $entry = readdir ($scan)) {
    next if ! -f $entry; # Skip if not a file
    print "$entry\n";
}
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Thanks for quick reply. Parser.exe is in current directory. I wanted to send the file name to my C program so that it can execute further opening that file. I am not able to send the file name to my C pgm now.

untested, sorry have no system here to do it, but it should give you the direction.

See also:

• File::Find
• Cookbook 2nd ed. 16.2. Running another program

use File::Find;

find(\&run, '.');
sub run{
  system("bla.exe $File::Find::name");
}
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It's not clear that the OP wants to recurse down a tree and process each of the files found. Even if that is the case, as it stands your sample code will try and process directories as well as files. At least the following line should be added to sub run before the system call:

  return if ! -f $File::Find::name;
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For scanning a single directory it is probably easier to simple use opendir/readdir as shown elsewhere.

---

DWIM is Perl's answer to Gödel

Yes, you are calling backticks in void context. You're ignoring the screen output of your program, so you have no evidence that it ran. Try this modification:

$dir = "C:\\parser_pgm\\test";
opendir(TXT, $dir) or die "Can't open $dir: $!";
while( defined ($file = readdir TXT) ) {
    print `parser_pgm.exe $file`;
}
closedir(TXT); # not XML
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Is that more like what you expect?

After Compline,
Zaxo

How are you running this script? If you run it from the command line, you'll get these errors:

Global symbol "$dir" requires explicit package name at test.pl line 4.
Global symbol "$dir" requires explicit package name at test.pl line 5.
Global symbol "$dir" requires explicit package name at test.pl line 5.
Global symbol "$file" requires explicit package name at test.pl line 6
+.
Global symbol "$file" requires explicit package name at test.pl line 7
+.
Execution of test.pl aborted due to compilation errors.
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If you're running the program by double-clicking on the file in Windows Explorer, you're probably not going to see the errors before the DOS box closes.

I think this code is what you want:

use strict;
use warnings;

my $dir = "C:\\parser_pgm\\test";
opendir(DIR, $dir) or die "Can't open $dir: $!";
while(my $file = readdir DIR) {
  my $pathname = "$dir\\$file";
  if (-f $pathname) {
    # I added the -f test after running this and finding
    # out that readdir returns "." and ".."
    # (At least on the version of ActivePerl I am using)

    print STDERR "running parser_pgm.exe on $pathname\n"; # for debugg
+ing


    system("parser_pgm.exe \"$pathname\"");
      # I added quotes in case there are spaces in the
      # file name (or in directory name in case you change it.

    if ($? != 0) {
      print STDERR "parser_pgm returned error $?\n";
    }
  }
}
closedir(DIR);
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Hi Thelonius,
Thanks a lot for your help. Indeed your code works. And as suggested by other monks I was not reading the output and hence was not aware if script really did the job.

Thanks one and all for the needful.

Regards
Ashutosh

You should skip directories. At least '.' and '..' exist.

use strict;
use warnings;

$dir = "C:\\parser_pgm\\test";
opendir(TXT, $dir) or die "Can't open $dir: $!";
while( defined ($file = readdir TXT) ) {
    next if ! -f $file; # Skip if not a file
    `parser_pgm.exe $file`;
}
closedir(TXT);
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Note also that I've changed the closedir(XML); to closedir(TXT); to match the opendir. The defined check is redundant by the way.

---

DWIM is Perl's answer to Gödel