File::Find: Problem with renaming folders recursively

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

I'm trying to use File::Find module to rename recursively certain chars in folder names in my directory tree. The code looks like this

#!/bin/perl

use warnings;
use strict;

use File::Find;
use File::Copy;

my $path = $ARGV[0];
my $from = $ARGV[1];
my $to = $ARGV[2];

die "You must supply a full directory path" unless (-e $path && -d $pa
+th);

find(\&renamedir, "$path");

sub renamedir {
    next if -f $_;
    next if /^\./;
        
    my $new_name = $_;
    $new_name    =~ s/$from/$to/g;
    chdir($File::Find::dir);
    move($_, $new_name) or die $!;
}
[download]

When I e.g. call this script like this to convert a string "John" to "Matt"

C:\>Replace.pl "C:/Temp/" John Matt
[download]

I get an error saying that "Can't cd to (C:/Temp/) John : No such file or directory. So, it seems that the problem is that the script changes the folder name before it tries to cd into it. How could I tackle this problem? Thanks!

Comment on File::Find: Problem with renaming folders recursively Select or Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: File::Find: Problem with renaming folders recursively by zentara (Cardinal) on Mar 20, 2009 at 15:07 UTC
See: Need to delete empty directories.[ you need to go into "depth first" mode, so that you don't change topdir names, before changing topdir's subdirs. `#!/usr/bin/perl use File::Find; finddepth sub { #return if $_ eq "." or $_ eq ".."; return unless -d; rmdir($_); if($! =~ /not empty/){warn "$File::Find::name $!"} }, @ARGV;` [download] I'm not really a human, but I play one on earth My Petition to the Great Cosmic Conciousness	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: File::Find: Problem with renaming folders recursively by larus (Acolyte) on Mar 20, 2009 at 15:28 UTC
I don't want to remove those dirs, I want to rename them.	[reply]
Re^3: File::Find: Problem with renaming folders recursively by zentara (Cardinal) on Mar 20, 2009 at 15:31 UTC
Well then, just take the code, take out the rmdir, and put in a rename. What? Are we supposed to write all your code for you? Just setup a test dir/subdir setup, and try renaming, with finddepth, instead of find. Also Google for "File::Find rename dirs" I'm not really a human, but I play one on earth My Petition to the Great Cosmic Conciousness	[reply]
Re^4: File::Find: Problem with renaming folders recursively by Anonymous Monk on Mar 20, 2009 at 17:10 UTC
Re^5: File::Find: Problem with renaming folders recursively by zentara (Cardinal) on Mar 20, 2009 at 18:40 UTC
Re: File::Find: Problem with renaming folders recursively by ELISHEVA (Prior) on Mar 20, 2009 at 14:08 UTC
Why not just use full path names in your move command and avoid cd'ing altogether? Best, beth	[reply]
Re: File::Find: Problem with renaming folders recursively by Bloodnok (Vicar) on Mar 20, 2009 at 14:13 UTC
Don't forget that that File::Find has `chdir`ed to the directory before `&wanted()` is called (you can't change the name of a directory whilst it is the current working directory) - I suspect that the `postprocess` & `bydepth` options may well be of use.... A user level that continues to overstate my experience :-))	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: File::Find: Problem with renaming folders recursively by larus (Acolyte) on Mar 20, 2009 at 14:33 UTC
Thanks for your replies. Anyway, I don't understand how should I modify this code. I'm very new to Perl.	[reply]
Re: File::Find: Problem with renaming folders recursively (File::Find::Rule) by toolic (Bishop) on Mar 20, 2009 at 16:59 UTC
If you think File::Find is a little obscure, perhaps you should try the CPAN module File::Find::Rule instead. This might be one way to accomplish your goal: `use warnings; use strict; use File::Find::Rule; my $path = $ARGV[0]; my $from = $ARGV[1]; my $to = $ARGV[2]; die "You must supply a full directory path" unless (-e $path && -d $pa +th); my @dirs = File::Find::Rule->directory() ->name("$from") ->in($path); for (@dirs) { my $orig = $_; s/$from/$to/g; rename $orig, $_ or die "Can not rename $orig to $_: $!"; }` [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: File::Find: Problem with renaming folders recursively (File::Find::Rule) by runrig (Abbot) on Mar 20, 2009 at 17:28 UTC
You're going to have to do a depth first search if you want to rename directories and their sub-directories, and File::Find::Rule doesn't seem to have an option for that. Though, I think you could sort the results by the number of directory separators (from greatest to least) -- yeah, that oughta work.	[reply]
Re^2: File::Find: Problem with renaming folders recursively (File::Find::Rule) by Anonymous Monk on Mar 20, 2009 at 17:26 UTC
Thanks. This renames only the first directory in the directory tree, not the directories under the first directory. I'm lost.	[reply]
Re^3: File::Find: Problem with renaming folders recursively (File::Find::Rule) by toolic (Bishop) on Mar 23, 2009 at 02:38 UTC
You are right -- I hadn't considered that case (which you hadn't explicitly mentioned). So, I googled, as zentara has mentioned a couple times, and quickly found this, which seems to work for me on linux: http://duramecho.com/ComputerPrograms/RecursiveRegexpRename/RecursiveRegexpRename.pl	[reply]
Re^4: File::Find: Problem with renaming folders recursively (File::Find::Rule) by larus (Acolyte) on Mar 23, 2009 at 06:36 UTC
Re: File::Find: Problem with renaming folders recursively by bellaire (Hermit) on Mar 20, 2009 at 14:09 UTC
I may be missing something, but don't you need to `chdir` into `$path` before you'll be able to descend into its subdirectories? Update: Ah, I did miss something, namely this passage from the documentation: `You are chdir()'d to $File::Find::dir when the function is called, unl +ess no_chdir was specified.` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: File::Find: Problem with renaming folders recursively by larus (Acolyte) on Mar 23, 2009 at 12:39 UTC
I found a solution, this works fine: `#!/bin/perl use warnings; use strict; use File::Find; use File::Copy; my $path = $ARGV[0]; my $from = $ARGV[1]; my $to = $ARGV[2]; die "You must supply a full directory path" unless (-e $path && -d $pa +th); finddepth(\&renamedir, "$path"); # find -> finddepth sub renamedir { return if -f $_; return if /^\./; my $new_name = $_; $new_name =~ s/$from/$to/g; move($_, $new_name) or die $!; }` [download]	[reply] [d/l]