Put your files into a hash. then you can throw away that last foreach loop and instead simply have this

if (exists $filelist{$f_name}) {
  print "$c - Found and to be deleted: $files\n";
}
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Hash key in %filelist would be the filename, hash value is unimportant, you may use 1 or even further information about the file in there

Do you mean something like this?

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

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

my $startdir = "/allfiles";

my @filelist = qw(1234567_bc_20101000.txt 99877_xy_20111111.txt); #for
+testing
my %filelist = map {$_, 1} @filelist;

my $includeFiles = File::Find::Rule->file
                             ->name('*.txt'); # search by file extensi
+ons

my @files = File::Find::Rule->or( $includeFiles )
                                ->in($startdir);

#locate only txt files in the starting directory
my $includeFiles = File::Find::Rule->file
                             ->name('*.txt'); # search by file extensi
+ons

my @files = File::Find::Rule->or( $includeFiles )
                                ->in($startdir);
my $f_name;
my $c=0;
foreach my $files(@files) {
  $c++;  

  if($files=~/(.*?)\/([^\/]+)$/) {
    $f_name = $2; 
  }

  if (exists $filelist{$f_name}) {
   print "$c - Found and to be deleted: $files\n";
  }


}
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But when I print the results I am getting all files and not only the ones that was found!
Thanks!

Can't confirm your observation. I tested this script and it worked as expected, after throwing away the duplicate lines "my $includeFiles = ..." and "my @files = ..".

The directory where the search will start has about 10GB of files in it, do you think that this code will be efficient enough to handle such a directory size?

There would seem to be two ways you can do this (but see correction below):

1. Go through your array, deleting each file name if it exists as a file, or
2. Go through your directory structure, checking each filename/path against your array (after turning it into a hash), and deleting it if it exists in the hash.

Generally, I would prefer the first method. It's almost certain to be faster to go through a list of files and check for their existence than to traverse an entire directory structure and check every file against a list. If you simply go through your array, checking for the existence of each pathname and deleting if it's found, then it doesn't matter how large or complex your directory structure is.

for my $file (@files){
  if( -f $file ){
    report($file);  # however you want to report a match
    if( unlink $file ){
      print "Deleted $file\n";
    } else {
      warn "Unable to delete $file\n";
    }
  }
}
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Correction: As Jethro pointed out, I misunderstood the original requirements, getting the two arrays he mentioned mixed up. The array he wants to check the files against does not have full path names, so my solution won't work. He will have to recurse through the directory structure and check them one by one.

Aaron B.
My Woefully Neglected Blog, where I occasionally mention Perl.

Definitely what jethro says.

A minor note - your $files regex stores two values but you only use one. And if you change the delimiter, you don't have to escape the slash. So, instead of:

  if($files=~/(.*?)\/([^\/]+)$/) {
    $f_name = $2;
  }
[download]

Either:

  # match all non-slashes up to end of line
  if($files=~m|([^/]+)$|) {
    $f_name = $1;
  }
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Or:

  # match everything beyond last slash
  if($files=~m|.*/(.+)|) {
    $f_name = $1;
  }
[download]

I have a question for you, if the values in this array @filelist was like this:my @filelist = qw(88732 99877 76211); I would have to match if these values are part of these file names in array @files, how would the regular expression be in this case. In another words matching values from @filelist against values in in the array @files that would be like this: my @files = qw(99877_bc_20101000.txt 99877_xy_20111111.txt 76211_bc_20101000.txt);
I hope I was clear on that. Thanks!

If I understand, you can simply narrow your regex to match up to the first underscore, and see if that 'exists':

foreach my $files(@files) {
  $c++;  

  if($files=~m|.*/([^_]+)|) {
    $f_name = $1;
  }

  if (exists $filelist{$f_name}) {
   print "$c - Found and to be deleted: $files\n";
  }


}
[download]

I might go as far as:

for (@files) {
  $c++;  

  if(m|.*/([^_]+)| && exists $filelist{$1} ) {
     print "$c - Found and to be deleted: $_\n";
  }
}
[download]

In this case I would put back the second foreach loop:

  foreach my $chk_file(@filelist) {
      #if($chk_file=~/$f_name/) {
      if($f_name=~/$chk_file/) {      
        print "$c - Found and to be deleted: $files\n";
      }
   }
[download]