Rename old files that do not begin with a dot

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

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Re: Rename old files that do not begin with a dot by Corion (Patriarch) on Oct 27, 2008 at 19:51 UTC
The code you posted doesn't make sense: What is the second line in this snippet supposed to do? `sub CheckFile { $File::Find::name; my $age = -M;` [download] You could print out the filename, `$age` and what other inforamtion you find relevant. Also note that `'$_, !~ /^\./'` is a constant string, which likely is not what you meant. Maybe you meant `$_ !~ /^\./` [download] instead? Also look at substr for an easy way of looking at the first character of a string.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Rename old files that do not begin with a dot by ikegami (Patriarch) on Oct 27, 2008 at 19:52 UTC
`if (-f && '$_, !~ /^\./' && ($age > $limit)) { ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^` [download] What's with the quotes? This is just a string literal. You might as well have written `if (-f && 'Hello World' && ($age > $limit)) {` [download] Fix: `if (-f && $_ !~ /^\./ && ($age > $limit)) {` [download] Or just `if (-f && !/^\./ && ($age > $limit)) {` [download] Please wrap you code in `<c>...</c>` tags in the future.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Rename old files that do not begin with a dot by ikegami (Patriarch) on Oct 27, 2008 at 20:34 UTC
Found a third bug. `$_` isn't the variable you should be using. `$_` is relative to some path relative under `/Users/admin/Documents/ScriptTest/`, but you're trying to rename a file in the current directory. `$File::Find::dir` is the current directory name, `$_` is the current filename within that directory `$File::Find::name` is the complete pathname to the file. `my $limit = 20; find (\&CheckFile, "/Users/admin/Documents/ScriptTest/"); sub CheckFile { my $age = -M $File::Find::name; if ( -f $File::Find::name && !/^\./ && $age > $limit ) { rename ( "$File::Find::dir/$_", "$File::Find::dir/.$_") or die "rename failed: $!"; } else { print $File::Find::name; print " is a youthfull ", int($age)," days old\n"; } }` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: Rename old files that do not begin with a dot by Anonymous Monk on Oct 27, 2008 at 22:31 UTC
Thank you so much for your help and advice, kind regards Mark	[reply]
Re: Rename old files that do not begin with a dot by runrig (Abbot) on Oct 27, 2008 at 19:53 UTC
`'$_, !~ /^\./'` is a string that is always true. You could use parenthesis instead of the single quotes, if you took out the comma (why is the comma there?). But since you're matching against the `$_` variable, you could replace the whole thing with `!/^\./`	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Rename old files that do not begin with a dot by mr_mischief (Monsignor) on Oct 27, 2008 at 20:11 UTC
You probably want `<c>` and `</c>` tags around your code for formatting and clarity. Have you tried taking the single quotes off of the `'$_, !~ /^\./'` part? Also, you shouldn't have a comma in that. So you'd have: `if (-f && $_ !~ /^\./ && ($age > $limit)) {` ... which you'd likely want to disambiguate for the programmer (perl has no problem) by using parentheses: `if (-f && ($_ !~ /^\./) && ($age > $limit)) {` ... and since pattern matches apply by default to $_ you could write as: `if (-f && (! /^\./) && ($age > $limit)) {` Yet you'd still have problems with files named, for example, 'foo' and '.foo', as you often can't rename one over the other and it will clobber the existing '.foo' with 'foo' if you can.	[reply] [d/l] [select]