ron7 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I have a module which is called by a command-line shell, or by a Tk GUI shell. In both cases the shells just collect parameters and the module does the work which includes building a list of files to process.

My problem is files or directories with non Latin-1 chars in them. When run in the command line context, such files are "found". When run within the Tk GUI context, they are not!

I inserted a debug print into the File::List->new processing loop to display the directories being processed, with an else to print those which were neither -d, nor -f. The modified File::List->new is shown below (my mods in column zero): 

sub new {
  my $class = shift;
  my $base  = shift;
  my $self = {};
  bless $self, $class;

  # store my base for later
  $self->{base} = $base;

  $debug && print "spawned with base [$base]\n";

  # read in contents of current directory
  opendir (BASE, $base);
  my @entries = grep !/^\.\.?\z/, readdir BASE;
  chomp(@entries);
  closedir(BASE);

  for my $entry (@entries) {
print "DEBUG: processing '$base/$entry'\n";

    # if entry is a directory, launch a new File::List to explore it
    # and store a reference to the new object in the dirlist hash
    if (-d "$base/$entry") {
      $debug && print _trace(),"following directory $base/$entry\n";
      my $newbase = new File::List("$base/$entry");
      $self->{dirlist}{ $entry } = $newbase;
    }

    # if entry is a file, store it's name in the dirlist hash
    elsif ( -f "$base/$entry"){
      $debug && print _trace(),"Found file : $base/$entry\n";
      $self->{dirlist}{ $entry } = 1;
    }
else {
  print "DEBUG: '$base/$entry' is not -f nor -d\n";
}
  }

  return $self;
}

[download]

The console output in command-line mode is: 

DEBUG: processing '/tmp/zumlaut//Zatôichi 01 - The Tale of Zatoichi (1
+962)'
DEBUG: processing '/tmp/zumlaut//Zatôichi 01 - The Tale of Zatoichi (1
+962)/folder.jpg'
DEBUG: processing '/tmp/zumlaut//Zatôichi 01 - The Tale of Zatoichi (1
+962)/VIDEO_TS'  
DEBUG: processing '/tmp/zumlaut//Zatôichi 01 - The Tale of Zatoichi (1
+962)/VIDEO_TS/fanart.jpg'
DEBUG: processing '/tmp/zumlaut//Zatôichi 01 - The Tale of Zatoichi (1
+962)/VIDEO_TS/VIDEO_TS.TAG'
DEBUG: processing '/tmp/zumlaut//Zatôichi 01 - The Tale of Zatoichi (1
+962)/backdrop.jpg'         
DEBUG: processing '/tmp/zumlaut//Zatôichi 01 - The Tale of Zatoichi (1
+962)/mymovies.xml'         
DEBUG: processing '/tmp/zumlaut//Pan's Labyrinth (2006)'
DEBUG: processing '/tmp/zumlaut//Pan's Labyrinth (2006)/folder.jpg'
DEBUG: processing '/tmp/zumlaut//Pan's Labyrinth (2006)/BDMV'
DEBUG: processing '/tmp/zumlaut//Pan's Labyrinth (2006)/BDMV/index.TAG
+'
DEBUG: processing '/tmp/zumlaut//Pan's Labyrinth (2006)/BDMV/fanart.jp
+g'
DEBUG: processing '/tmp/zumlaut//Pan's Labyrinth (2006)/backdrop.jpg'
DEBUG: processing '/tmp/zumlaut//Pan's Labyrinth (2006)/mymovies.xml'

[download]
In Tk GUI mode we get: 
DEBUG: processing '/tmp/zumlaut//Zatôichi 01 - The Tale of Zatoichi (1
+962)'
DEBUG: '/tmp/zumlaut//Zatôichi 01 - The Tale of Zatoichi (1962)' is no
+t -f nor -d
DEBUG: processing '/tmp/zumlaut//Pan's Labyrinth (2006)'
DEBUG: processing '/tmp/zumlaut//Pan's Labyrinth (2006)/folder.jpg'
DEBUG: processing '/tmp/zumlaut//Pan's Labyrinth (2006)/BDMV'
DEBUG: processing '/tmp/zumlaut//Pan's Labyrinth (2006)/BDMV/index.TAG
+'
DEBUG: processing '/tmp/zumlaut//Pan's Labyrinth (2006)/BDMV/fanart.jp
+g'
DEBUG: processing '/tmp/zumlaut//Pan's Labyrinth (2006)/backdrop.jpg'
DEBUG: processing '/tmp/zumlaut//Pan's Labyrinth (2006)/mymovies.xml'

[download]

Note that the path with the utf-8 char in it is not recognized as a directory. Apparently *Something* introduced by the Tk environment is preventing the -d test from returning true.

I've tried a few things, but to no avail. Suggestions or helpful references MOST welcome!

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: File::List, UTF-8, and Tk
by Anonymous Monk on Apr 28, 2011 at 03:20 UTC
[reply]
Re: File::List, UTF-8, and Tk
by ron7 (Beadle) on Apr 28, 2011 at 04:06 UTC
    Ok, despite monks with vows of silence, I have a patch which "fixes" File::List->new when run under Tk (refer to earlier code snippet): 
    use Encode;
...
  for my $entry (@entries) {
    $entry = decode('utf8', $entry);
...

    [download]

    This works in both cases (command-line and Tk env), although the debug print of the filename is now screwed when displayed on the console (the utf8 char is now unicode, I think), not that that matters: 

    DEBUG: processing '/tmp/zumlaut//Zat�ichi 01 - The Tale of Zato
+ichi (1962)'
...

    [download]

    I'm always reluctant to modify distribution modules and this fix feels very klugy. Suggestions please?

[reply]
[d/l]
[select]
      I'm always reluctant to modify distribution modules and this fix feels very klugy. Suggestions please?

      1) subclass 2) inline

[reply]
        Thanks, one of those will be the way to go--should have thought of it myself *<8-). I still have problems related to those paths and use of FBox/chooseDirectory/getOpenFile, but there seems enough material about this problem around that it may be solvable.

        BTW, should have mentioned in the original post that my command-line and Tk apps must run on Linux/Win32/OS-X, in any locale. Big ask, and so far and after a lot of work, they mostly do except for the file path problem under Tk.

[reply]

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