Delete files with Perl in Windows

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

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Re: Delete files with Perl in Windows by ikegami (Patriarch) on Nov 29, 2007 at 23:12 UTC
You need to escape spaces in a `glob` spec unless you want them to be treated as pattern seperator. `>perl -le"print for glob '.jpg .gif'" a.jpg b.jpg c.gif >perl -le"print for glob 'C:/Documents and Settings/'" C:/Documents and >perl -le"print for glob 'C:/Documents\ and\ Settings/'" C:/Documents and Settings/All Users C:/Documents and Settings/Default User C:/Documents and Settings/ikegami C:/Documents and Settings/kaijugal C:/Documents and Settings/LocalService C:/Documents and Settings/NetworkService` [download] Alternatively, use `bsd_glob` from File::Glob. `>perl -le"use File::Glob qw( bsd_glob ); print for bsd_glob 'C:/Docume +nts and Settings/*'" C:/Documents and Settings/All Users C:/Documents and Settings/Default User C:/Documents and Settings/ikegami C:/Documents and Settings/kaijugal C:/Documents and Settings/LocalService C:/Documents and Settings/NetworkService` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: Delete files with Perl in Windows by codeacrobat (Chaplain) on Nov 30, 2007 at 06:41 UTC
If you don't want to set the escapes manually, then quotemeta is your friend. `perl -le "print for glob quotemeta q(C:/Documents and Settings/*)"` [download] `print+qq(\L@{[ref\&@]}@{['@'x7^'!#2/"!4']});`	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^3: Delete files with Perl in Windows by ikegami (Patriarch) on Nov 30, 2007 at 08:58 UTC
Sorry, but that doesn't work. The reason it doesn't work depends on the system. On non-dosish systems, that will escape meta-characters that should remain meta-characters, such as ``. That means `glob quotemeta $expr` is the same as `''.$expr`. On dosish systems, that will insert characters that will be interpreted as directory separators. On DOSISH systems, [...] backslashes (under GLOB_QUOTE) only quote the glob metacharacters '[', ']', '{', '}', '-', '~', and backslash itself. All other backslashes are passed through unchanged. That means `glob quotemeta 'c:/some dir/.'` is the same as `glob 'c:/some dir//.*'`.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^4: Delete files with Perl in Windows by halley (Prior) on Nov 30, 2007 at 14:21 UTC
Re^5: Delete files with Perl in Windows by ikegami (Patriarch) on Nov 30, 2007 at 19:52 UTC
Re: Delete files with Perl in Windows by tachyon-II (Chaplain) on Nov 29, 2007 at 23:15 UTC
$! check the return value. As noted this is probably a permissions issue. Check the helpful me$!$!age. Make sure you have printed a header then..... `for my $file (@filelist) { unlink $file or print "<p>Unable to delete $file. Reason $!\n"; }` [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Delete files with Perl in Windows by moritz (Cardinal) on Nov 29, 2007 at 23:07 UTC
Are you sure that the script has enough privileges to delete these files? Usually CGI scripts are run with low privileges in order to prevent malicious actions if there are security holes, and usually they can't delete arbitrary files.	[reply]
Re: Delete files with Perl in Windows by TGI (Parson) on Nov 30, 2007 at 19:09 UTC
Not related to your question, but do you really mean `&PrintForm`? Calling a subroutine with the leading & and no arguments passes the calling sub's argument list. Since Perl passes sub arguments by reference, this can lead to some spooky action at a distance that can be very hard to debug. See perlsub for more details. Consider this code: `my $critical_data = 'Original Value'; print "Begin: $critical_data\n"; &SubOne($critical_data); print "End: $critical_data\n"; sub SubOne { print "\tSubOne Got: @_\n"; &SubTwo; } sub SubTwo { print "\tSubTwo Got: @_\n"; $_[0] = 'pwned!'; } __END__ Begin: Original Value SubOne Got: Original Value SubTwo Got: Original Value End: pwned!` [download] Compare the result of this code: `my $critical_data = 'Original Value'; print "Begin: $critical_data\n"; SubOne($critical_data); print "End: $critical_data\n"; sub SubOne { print "\tSubOne Got: @_\n"; SubTwo(); } sub SubTwo { print "\tSubTwo Got: @_\n"; $_[0] = 'pwned!'; } __END__ Begin: Original Value SubOne Got: Original Value SubTwo Got: End: Original Value` [download] Which would you rather debug? TGI says moo	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Delete files with Perl in Windows by Anonymous Monk on Dec 04, 2007 at 03:37 UTC
File::Remove...	[reply]