Since you are planning to obliterate files using tools that are unfamiliar to you, it should go without saying that you should be very careful and thorough about error checking -- in the sense that, before you actually do an "unlink" call or something similar, you have tested for failures and unintended/unexpected outcomes.

This isn't really all that hard to do -- one way would be to divorce the File::Find part of the task from the "unlink" part; just build a list of files to be removed, and take a few moments to actually review that list yourself, before you throw in the "unlink" call. (Or, just save that list to a file, and once you've checked it, pass it to a separate one-line script to actually remove the files in the list.)

914 suggested some good earlier discussions. I know of another, which is maybe not directly relevant, but demonstrates how the lack of error checking, combined with lack of understanding about File::Find, can be quite risky: Here's the seeker's post and the explanation of the real problem.

In reply to Re: File::Find question by graff
in thread File::Find question by FireBird34

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