my $FileName = "jimbo";
my $t = ".tm";
print $FileName$t; # this just wont work - what you REALLY want is

my $fullFileName = $FileName . $t; # the . joins them together - calle
+d "concatenation" - do a PM search on this keyword
print $fullFileName; # prints 'jimbo.tm'
[download]

unlink ($fullFileName) or die "Error! : $!\n"; 
# die statements will kill the program if an error is encountered.
# the error msg is contained in $! special variable and is printed
# on exit
[download]

You need unlink $FileName in the last line.

It will tell you how many files it deleted, and you could report this.

sub DeleteFile()
{
   my $FileName = $_[0] . $t;
   $ret = unlink $FileName;
   die "No file called [$Filename] deleted\n" unless $ret == 1;
}
[download]

sub DeleteFile()
{
   my $FileName = $_[0] . $t;
   die "No file called [$Filename] deleted\n" unless 
      unlink $FileName;
}
[download]

Update: added third option.

or, you can be more friendly and return the value to the caller :

sub DeleteFile()
{
   my $FileName = $_[0] . $t;
   my $ret = unlink $FileName;

   warn "No file called [$Filename] deleted\n" unless $ret;
   return $ret;
}
[download]

  $t=".tm" #this is use for the file extension, 

  sub DeleteFile() {
      my $FileName=$_[0];
      $FileName="$FileName$t";
      unlink '$FileName$t';
  }
[download]

The " is very different from '. In quoting with " the scalars inside are substituted with their values.

Your next line is scrambled. First of all you are using single quote ' which will not interpret variables. Second of all you are already added the extention onto $FileName. So you don't need to do it again.

If you just change the last line to:

unlink $FileName;
[download]

As you can see by the many different suggestions above: "There are many ways to skin a cat in Perl". (Pun intended) ;-)

Do yourself a favor and always include the following when presenting a code snippet:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
[download]

Also it is an excellent habit to lookup keywords related to your question. At the top of almost every page at perlmonks.com there is a search box. If you type a key word such as "unlink" into this box and do a search you will be presented with a man page for that keyword. Not only will the man page give you the background info on the function it will also include several pieces of example code. Sometimes these will be exactly what you need and sometimes you will need to modify the examples a bit.

For example: perlfunc:unlink
Deletes a list of files. Returns the number of files successfully deleted.

$cnt = unlink 'a', 'b', 'c';

unlink @goners;

unlink <*.bak>;

None of the examples are exactly what you are looking for. The bottom example looks new and unusual. You can mark that for later study. The top example looks really close to your needs. In fact if you just delete the 'b', 'c' from the line you have something almost exactly what you are looking for. It is not much of a leap to figure out $cnt = unlink $FileName;

Hope this opens up a few windows on how to squeeze the best from perlmonks and upscale your code?

Claude

First mistake is that you are not checking the return value of unlink. I'm a bit surprised you made it to the front page with such a mistake. There's no need to go asking around why your program "doesn't work" if you refuse to let Perl help you. Always, ALWAYS, ALWAYS check the return value of system calls. Just do it. $! would have told you what was wrong. You say it outcome no error. Well, duh. You're ignoring the error, silencing Perl.

Your second mistake is the use of single quotes, as was pointed out in another post. You need double quotes there, or the concatenation operator.

Third mistake is assuming that unlinking a file actually deletes it. It doesn't have to. A file could still have other names (hard links), or open file handles. While the name might be gone from the filesystem, the file itself only disappears if all its names are gone, and all the open handles are closed.

-- Abigail