in reply to Multiple file input into a perl script

It depends. How do you find all those files? If you have them in a text file, read them from that text file:

use strict;
my $filename = 'my_textfile.txt';
open my $fh, $filename
    or die "Couldn't read '$filename': $!";

chomp @ARGV = <$fh>;

print "Processing $_"
    for @ARGV;

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If they all are below a certain directory, use File::Find:

use strict;
use File::Find;

my $directory = '/home/kelder/files';

find(sub {
    push @ARGV, $File::Find::name;
}, $directory );

print "Processing $_"
    for @ARGV;

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If you want to use a shell glob pattern, you can prevent the shell from expanding it and do the expansion in Perl:

use strict;
use File::DosGlob qw(bsd_glob); # to get sane whitespace semantics

my $pattern = '/home/kelder/files/*.txt';

@ARGV = glob $pattern;

print "Processing $_"
    for @ARGV;

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If you have the list in some other fashion, you'll have to tell us, but the basic pattern remains.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^2: Multiple file input into a perl script
by kelder (Novice) on Sep 30, 2008 at 19:01 UTC
    I thought about using the glob function, since all of my files are in the same directory, but because I'm new to perl I might be misuing the format: My Code: 
    @files=<ABi1*>;
foreach $file (@files) {
    while(<>) {
          Do my function;
     }
    if (eof($file)) {
           Do my end of file cleanup
    }
}

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    Does the way I set this up work, or am I completely screwing up the way you are supposed to use this function?
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      The magic diamond-operator <> only works if you stuff the filenames into @ARGV. But you surely have tried that yourself and merely forgot to tell me that you found your code didn't work the way you wrote it.

      I recommend you read up on open to learn how to open and read a single file and process that, and then proceed to do that in the loop:

      use strict;
use File::DosGlob qw(bsd_glob);

my @files = glob 'ABi1*';
foreach my $file (@files) {
    open my $fh, '<', $file
        or die "Couldn't read '$file': $!";
    while (<$fh>) {
        ... do your function
    };
    # EOF, do end of file cleanup
};

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        The magic diamond-operator <> only works if you stuff the filenames into @ARGV.
        My reading of I/O Operators has me believing that using the diamond operator for globbing works as the OP seems to expect. Here's what I get with a simple test: 
        -> ls
file1.txt       file2.txt       file3.txt
-> perl -le '@files = <file*>; print @files;'
file1.txt file2.txt file3.txt

        [download]
        I may have missed something, but it looks to me that kelder's expectation of how globbing works with <> is right. Is there a platform difference to worry about? (OP is on a Mac, above test runs the same on a Mac and under NetBSD.)
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Re^2: Multiple file input into a perl script
by kelder (Novice) on Sep 30, 2008 at 19:53 UTC
    This worked out great: 
    use File::DosGlob qw(bsd_glob); # to get sane whitespace semantics

my $pattern = '/home/kelder/files/*.txt';

@ARGV = glob $pattern;

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    Only there is a new problem; my output file list reads like this: 
    Ai0.txt
Ai1.txt
Ai2.txt
...
Ai10.txt
Ai11.txt

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    What ends up happening is that in my "results" file, where I print my counts, the order of the inputs is messed up. 
    Output:
File1
File10
File11
File2

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    How do I fix this ordering? Can I input the files in the order they are in the directory with another method? Thanks for all of the help so far!!
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[reply]
        Sorting would be very useful, only I want to be able to sort the input files before I use their input- can I use the sort function on  @ARGV=glob $mypattern?
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