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

I'm trying to write something that will search multiple directories. Say my script is called findem.pl, I want to be able to pass it multiple arguments and have it search each one for something specific. Example: 
# ./findem.pl /home/me /home/you

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Right now It will only search through the first directory. Below is what I'm using right now to do this. I'm using Find::File::Rule which if I'm reading correctly, is supposed to be able to accept an array. I don't doubt that I'm doing something wrong. (I'm a complete newb at this stuff) 

#!/usr/bin/env perl

use strict;
use warnings;
use File::Find::Rule;

 my @files = find(
     file =>
     name => [qw/ *.mkv *.avi / ],
     in => @ARGV
     );

foreach my $infile (@files) {
    print $infile . "\n";
}

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I've tried manually building my array (i.e. changing @ARGV to @dirs and using my @dirs = ("/home/me","/home/you"); ) and it still does not work, so I'm thinking it's something with how I'm trying to use the directories. Any suggestions?

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Searching Multiple directories???
by GrandFather (Saint) on Oct 20, 2011 at 02:14 UTC

    Try passing an array reference as the value for 'in':

         in => \@ARGV

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    Otherwise the first element is treated as the directory to search and the remaining elements are treated as parameters to find.

    True laziness is hard work
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[d/l]
      Wow, something as simple as a \, that worked perfectly. I wish I knew what exactly that did, guess I need to go research what an array reference is :) Thanks!
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        You could consider arming yourself with some of the many wonderful Perl books around as well:

Effective Perl Programming - D'Foy et al
Conway's OO Perl
MJD's Higher Order Perl

In particular I would recommend the Perl Cookbook.
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