Remember to use code tags for your code, as described in Writeup Formatting Tips.

Without seeing your code, this is just a guess...

I assume that now you are doing something like this:


opendir(DIR, "$somedir") or die $!;
while(my $dirEntry = readdir(DIR)){
  if(&SOME_TEST($dirEntry)){
    unlink $dirEntry;
    unlink $dirEntryPair;
  }
}
closedir(DIR);
[download]



If in fact this is what you're doing, why don't you try another approach:


opendir(DIR, "$somedir") or die $!;
my @dir = readdir(DIR);
foreach my $dirEntry (@dir){
  if(&SOME_TEST($dirEntry)){
    unlink $dirEntry;
    unlink $dirEntryPair;
    @dir = readdir(DIR);
  }
}
closedir(DIR);
[download]

Regarding this part of your suggested code:

foreach my $dirEntry (@dir){
  if(&SOME_TEST($dirEntry)){
    ...
    @dir = readdir(DIR);
  }
}
[download]

As a rule, it is a Bad Idea™ to alter or replace the contents of an array within a "for" loop that is iterating over that array. Results of doing so may be "unpredictable" at best.

As it turns out, checking for existence of a file before doing "unlink" is actually unnecessary -- you are not checking the return status from "unlink", and frankly, why care whether you "unlink" a file that is non-existent? That sort of "error" is harmless and could safely be ignored.

Say, why do you have the ampersand before 'SOME_TEST' -- &SOME_TEST(...) -- but not anywhere else? Followup: why have an ampersand at all (in your proposed code)?

Just to add to the information. What i want actaually is a refreshing of the directory while its undergoing the 'readdir while loop', if some deletion of files happens in this while loop.

Why do you want to "refresh" the directory (and what do you mean by that, anyway)? It would have been better if you had added a sample of the code you have tried.

Maybe rather than deleting files within the loop, you might want to just build a list of files to be deleted (store the file names as keys in a hash), and then delete them as a separate step:

opendir(DIR,$somepath);
my %todelete;
while( $file = grep /[^.]/, readdir DIR ) {
    if ( !exists( $todelete{$file} ) and some_test( "$somepath/$file" 
+)) {
        $todelete{$file} = undef;
        ( my $otherfile = $file ) =~ s/this/that/;
        $todelete{$otherfile} = undef;
    }
}
unlink "$somepath/$_" for ( keys %todelete );
[download]