Re: perl question

[Rob Ransbottom <rir@mediaone.net>]

On Tue, 17 Jul 2001, Craig Dickson wrote:


> > What would be a nice command to remove a dirtory that had files in it?

> rm -rf directory

But if you don't want to spawn a sh.
Check all this as it is off the cuff and I would usually
use backticks or system to do this type of thing.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use File:Path;
rmtree("/");	# always be prepared


> > Even better.... what would be a nice command to delete all files
> > in one directory... (leaving the directory intact)

This is a vague question, so you get various answers.  
Are subdirectories files?  
Are hidden files to be counted?  
Are files in subdirectories in the directory?
What about lost+found subdirectories?

> rm -rf directory/*

This is shell to remove all unhidden entries in a directory
and all their contents.  Leaves the .files in directory.

The perl is:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use File:Path;

my @list = <"directory/*">;

foreach my $en (@list) {
    unlink $en if not -d $en;
    rmtree($en) if -d $en;
}


> which will delete everything in a directory, including subdirectories; or
> 
> find . -type f | xargs rm -f

This removes all the regular files in . and in its subdirectories.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use File:Find;
find( sub { unlink @_[0] if -f @_[0] }, "directory"):


This would remove everything but directories.
find( sub { unlink @_[0] if not -d @_[0] }, "directory"):

> to delete all files in a directory or its subdirectories, but keep the
> directory structure intact.
> 
> Perl isn't required.

My treatment here is naive, but hopefully
brings some of the issues to light.  
Look at the boot scripts under /etc which clean out
/tmp, to get an idea of some of the issues to consider.

--
rob                     Live the dream.