using filehandle to open files listed in array

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

Thanks for your earlier help with the find module and the file tests.

I am getting a list of text files using the find module and the file tests.

Im saving the paths to these files into an array, I then want to open them for writing using a file handle.

So I use a foreach statement to loop through the array and open a file handle for each file, i then use a while loop on the filehandle to read each line at a time. But it doesnt work. I think the file can be accessed because i get no error messages. What is wrong.

Japhy has replied saying the code works on his machine. I'm using osx and perl, could that be a problem.

No the files only contained no data. doh.

#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w #  print warnings
use strict;    # install all three strictures

# program to open files in a directory  and change directory paths fro
+m oldpath to $newpath
# use stat function to mke file handles available

$|++;          # force auto flush of output buffer

use File::Find;
use Cwd;
use File::Path;


my @ListofFiles;

my $Start_dir = shift
  or die "usage: $0 <start_dir>\n";    #define string directory as <ST
+DIN>

# scan recursivley from the start directory
unless ( -d $Start_dir ) {
    die "Start directory .'$Start_dir' . is not a directory.\n";
}

sub wanted {

    my $fileopened = $File::Find::name;
    my $fileout    = "$fileopened.NEW2";
    if ( -e $fileopened ) {

        #print "Found $File::Find::name\n";
    }

    if ( -T $fileopened ) {

        #print "$File::Find::name is a DATA file\n";

        push( @ListofFiles, $fileopened );

    }
    else {

        #print "Didn't OPEN $File::Find::name\n";
    }
}

sub searchfiles () {

    my $a;

    #print "$fileout\n";

    foreach $a (@ListofFiles) {
        print "$a\n";
        ( open FILEOPENED, "$a" ) or die "couldn't open the file   $!"
+;

        while (<FILEOPENED>) {
            print "file is opened for reading";

        } 
        
        
        close(FILEOPENED);

    }
}


find( { wanted => \&wanted, no_chdir => 1 }, $Start_dir );
searchfiles();
[download]

Comment on using filehandle to open files listed in array Download Code

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Re: using filehandle to open files listed in array by japhy (Canon) on May 14, 2006 at 12:55 UTC
Your program worked fine for me. The only glitch I see is that your while loop to read from the file isn't printing any of the content of the file, just "file is opened for reading". I'd do: `while (<FILEOPENED>) { print }` Jeff `japhy` Pinyan, P.L., P.M., P.O.D, X.S.: Perl, regex, and `perl` hacker How can we ever be the sold short or the cheated, we who for every service have long ago been overpaid? ~~ Meister Eckhart	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: using filehandle to open files listed in array by richill (Monk) on May 14, 2006 at 13:36 UTC
thanks	[reply]
Re: using filehandle to open files listed in array by merlyn (Sage) on May 14, 2006 at 15:39 UTC
`sub wanted { my $fileopened = $File::Find::name;` [download] I don't think you want this combination. $File::Find::name is the path including any parent directories, but you're already chdir'ed into the directory containing the file. Inside `wanted`, you want to use `$_`. After the execution is complete, you'll want $File::Find::name. More specifically, when you're thinking about "a/b/c.txt", you're already in the directory "a/b", so trying to open "a/b/c.txt" is wrong now. You want just c.txt, which is in $_. Review the thread beginning in "using file::find::name and file tests". (update: oh, that was you. apparently you didn't learn anything from the other posts!) -- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker Be sure to read my standard disclaimer if this is a reply.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: using filehandle to open files listed in array by richill (Monk) on May 14, 2006 at 20:17 UTC
Im hopelessly confused. I thought that using `find( { wanted => \&wanted, no_chdir => 1 }, $Start_dir );` would mean that I don't change directories inside wanted so I could use $File::Find::name. I dont want to waste anyones time so I'm going to reread the post again and again until I get it..	[reply] [d/l]
Re^3: using filehandle to open files listed in array by jwkrahn (Abbot) on May 14, 2006 at 20:41 UTC
The problem is that when you try to open the files you are not in $Start_dir so you have to prepend that to the file name like: `open FILEOPENED, "$Start_dir/$a" or die "couldn't open the file $!"` [download]	[reply] [d/l]