Spaces in folder names...

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

Hi

I am using a simple perl script that would list the names of the files in a specified directory (using glob command). But when i pass a path that has a space in a folder, the code fails! How do i escape the blank spaces in folder names>

Code shown below:

$input_folder    = $ARGV[0];

print "input : $input_folder \n";
@inp_files = glob("$input_folder" . "\\*.*");

foreach $inp(@inp_files)
{
    print "$inp" . "\n";
    
    @filename = split(/\\/, "$inp");
    
    $levels = scalar @filename;    
    
    my $name = $filename[$levels - 1];
    
    print "\t\t\t File Name : $name \n";
}
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Comment on Spaces in folder names... Download Code

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Re: Spaces in folder names... by ikegami (Patriarch) on Oct 14, 2009 at 01:59 UTC
Use `bsd_glob` from File::Glob	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: Spaces in folder names... by biswanath_c (Beadle) on Oct 14, 2009 at 03:55 UTC
This solution worked! Thanks a lot!	[reply]
Re: Spaces in folder names... by swampyankee (Parson) on Oct 14, 2009 at 02:20 UTC
Since it seems you're getting the folder name from the command line, beware that white space will be used to separate individual command line arguments. If this is happening -- and I'm willing to bet XP that it is -- you'll have to try quoting the entire folder name, ("like this"). I believe there's a way to escape the white space in Windows (I know there is in most *ix shells), so dig into your shell documentation. Information about American English usage here and here. Floating point issues? Please read this before posting. — emc	[reply]
Re^2: Spaces in folder names... by ikegami (Patriarch) on Oct 14, 2009 at 04:02 UTC
It has nothing to do with the shell. Despite an origin in `csh`, `glob` patterns are system independent. Space is special to `glob`. It indicates a separation of patterns. For example, `glob('.h .c')` will return all C source and C header files. Surrounding the pattern in quotes will fail. Quotes aren't special to `glob`. The space can be escaped using "`\`". However, it's simpler to just call `bsd_glob`. `bsd_glob` is the function that implements `glob`, but it doesn't treat spaces specially when it's called directly. — Almost. IIRC, "\" is treated literally in Windows when it isn't followed by a special character. This doesn't matter here.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^3: Spaces in folder names... by swampyankee (Parson) on Oct 14, 2009 at 20:45 UTC
I was thinking that it did have something to do with the shell because he was getting the value for his input folder from `$ARGV[0]`. Since bsd_glob seemed to work with no other changes, I'll accept that the shell was not relevant. Information about American English usage here and here. Floating point issues? Please read this before posting. — emc	[reply] [d/l]