"There are six ways of doing anything in Perl." So say I on Perl courses and just occasionally I come up with an example that proves it. This one doesn't quite - I show you just five ways of finding the names of all the files in the current directory:
$stuff = `ls`;
@fings = glob("*");
opendir(DH,".");
@allfings = readdir(DH);
@another = <*>;
open (FH,"ls|");
@yetmore = <FH>;
Why so many different options? A good question, partly answered by the fact that they're all slightly different in what they do, so each has its ideal use. But I'll admit that the language probably didn't need THAT many ways all in quite common use. It does keep me on my toes on
Perl Programming Courses such as the one I ran last week.
(written 2008-07-14, updated 2008-07-23)
Associated topics are indexed as below, or enter http://melksh.am/nnnn for individual articles
P602 - Perl - Advanced File and Directory Handling [839] Reporting on the 10 largest files or 10 top scores - (2006-08-20)
[975] Answering ALL the delegate's Perl questions - (2006-12-09)
[1225] Perl - functions for directory handling - (2007-06-09)
[1832] Processing all files in a directory - Perl - (2008-10-11)
[1861] Reactive (dynamic) formatting in Perl - (2008-10-31)
[2876] Different perl examples - some corners I rarely explore - (2010-07-18)
[3412] Handling binary data in Perl is easy! - (2011-08-30)
[3429] Searching through all the files in or below a directory - Ruby, Tcl, Perl - (2011-09-09)
P215 - Perl - More about Files [2405] But I am reading from a file - no need to prompt (Perl) - (2009-09-14)
[2964] An introduction to file handling in programs - buffering, standard in and out, and file handles - (2010-09-21)
[3320] Reading the nth line from a file (Perl and Tcl examples) - (2011-06-09)
[3839] Spraying data from one incoming to series of outgoing files in Perl - (2012-08-15)
P207 - Perl - File Handling [12] How many people in a room? - (2004-08-12)
[114] Relative or absolute milkman - (2004-11-10)
[255] STDIN, STDOUT, STDERR and DATA - Perl file handles - (2005-03-23)
[616] printf - a flawed but useful function - (2006-02-22)
[618] Perl - its up to YOU to check your file opened - (2006-02-23)
[702] Iterators - expressions tha change each time you call them - (2006-04-27)
[867] Being sure to be positive in Perl - (2006-09-15)
[1312] Some one line Perl tips and techniques - (2007-08-21)
[1416] Good, steady, simple example - Perl file handling - (2007-10-30)
[1442] Reading a file multiple times - file pointers - (2007-11-23)
[1467] stdout v stderr (Tcl, Perl, Shell) - (2007-12-10)
[1841] Formatting with a leading + / Lua and Perl - (2008-10-15)
[1860] Seven new intermediate Perl examples - (2008-10-30)
[2233] Transforming data in Perl using lists of lists and hashes of hashes - (2009-06-12)
[2818] File open and read in Perl - modernisation - (2010-06-19)
[2821] Chancellor George Osborne inspires Perl Program - (2010-06-22)
[2833] Fresh Perl Teaching Examples - part 2 of 3 - (2010-06-27)
[3326] Finding your big files in Perl - design considerations beyond the course environment - (2011-06-14)
[3548] Dark mornings, dog update, and Python and Lua courses before Christmas - (2011-12-10)
[3830] Traversing a directory in Perl - (2012-08-08)
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