Thanx for ur replies and coming to the topic actually i am working this out in LINUX and here we are using it temporarily for a file which has around 100 include statements and again in each inlcude file there may be around 1 to 10 ranging depinding on the type of device rules file. So here its just parent and a Child level ......

Firstly we want to test it our for at leat 2 to 3 levels of includes within include files. Coming to the fastness as you said it not a big problem about it will be OK if it takes adequate amount of time.

i shall also jus give out a sample code which is presently backing up the files which are not having any inlcude statements and also recursively searching for the inlcude into the Depth........

#!/usr/bin/perl 

use strict;


   my $first_path = "/opt/netcool/etc/test.rules";
   &srch_include($first_path);
   my ($incl_full_path , $dir_path, $file_name) ;
 

   sub srch_include
     {
        my ($main_path) = @_  ;
        print " First Sub Path : $main_path \n";

        open( FH1, "$main_path") or die " Sub1 Error: $! \n ";
        my @main_file_cont = <FH1>;
        my $count = 0;
         
        foreach my $main_file_line ( @main_file_cont )
          { 
             if( $main_file_line =~ /^(\s+)?include\s+"(.*)"$/)
               {  

                  my $count++;
                  $incl_full_path = $2 ;
                  print " Inlcudes :: $incl_full_path \n ";
     
                  $incl_full_path =~ /(.*\/)(.*)/;
                  $dir_path = $1 ;
                  $file_name = $2;

                  print " Dir : $dir_path  File : $file_name \n ";
                  system ("mkdir -p /root/msk/$dir_path");
                  sleep 2 ;
                  open(CR, ">/root/msk/$incl_full_path") or die " Main
+ File Error: $! \n";
                  print CR " @main_file_cont ";
                  close(CR);

                  &srch_include($incl_full_path);   
                }           
          }

        if($count == 0 )
        { 
             #print " $incl_full_path has No includes and lookup \n ";

             $incl_full_path =~ /(.*\/)(.*)/;
             $dir_path = $1 ;
             $file_name = $2;

             #print " Dir : $dir_path  File : $file_name \n " 
             system ("mkdir -p /root/msk/$dir_path");
             sleep 2 ;
             open(CR, ">/root/msk/$incl_full_path") or die " No Includ
+e Error: $! \n";
             print CR " @main_file_cont ";
             close(CR);
        }
     }
[download]

Are these rules files generated by a program, or have they been hand coded? If the latter, you probably want to check for single quotes around the filename too, rather than just double quotes.

You've got my $count twice (as strict will warn you.) The value of $count isn't going to make it out of the if statement, so your $count == 0 test will always succeed.

In your

$main_file_line =~ /^(\s+)?include\s+"(.*)"$/
[download]

the (\s+)? is obfusciated; \s* is much clearer and efficient.

Are you sure you don't have any circular dependencies in your include statements? You aren't testing for them. If there is one... well, endless loops take a long time to finish. Also, how do you want to handle the case where there are overlapping dependencies? E.g, A includes B and C; B and C each include D. Do you really want D and its dependencies to be searched twice?

throop