unlink full path to files

[Janek Schleicher]

Tony wrote at Thu, 03 Jul 2003 15:40:43 +0000:

> I would like to use the full pathname with the unlink
> function but it doesn't seem to work that way?
> Is it possible or must you always be in the directory
> that the files are deleted from?
>
> This is perl, v5.6.1 built for i386-linux
>
> use strict;
> use warnings;
>
> These first two work,
>
> chdir '/floppy' or die "Can't cd to /floppy: $!\n";
> system("rm /floppy/@delete_files") == 0 or warn
> "Problem when system rm @delete_files: $!"; # works

I doubt it.
That will only work if @delete_files contains only 1 element.
If @delete_files = ("a", "b") for example
"rm /floppy/@delete_files" is interpolated to
"rm /floppy/a b"
what is perhaps something different of what you wanted to achieve.

> chdir '/floppy' or die "Can't cd to /floppy: $!\n";
> unlink @delete_files or warn

That try to do something lik
rm a b
(with @delete_files like above)

> "Problem when unlinking @delete_files: $!"; # works

You might better try something like

unlink map "/floppy/$_", @delete_files or die "...";


Greetings,
Janek

[Tad McClellan]

Tony <tony1911@hotmail.com> wrote:

>

> I would like to use the full pathname with the unlink
> function

That will be fine.

> Is it possible

Yes.

> These don't work.
>
> chdir '/floppy' or die "Can't cd to /floppy: $!\n";
> unlink "/floppy/@delete_files" or warn

Try looking at what you are giving to unlink():

print "/floppy/@delete_files";

And you might see something like:

/floppy/file1 file2 file3

That is a single scalar, unlink wants a _list_.

that should one file named '/floppy/file1 file2 file3',
ie a filename with spaces in it.

> "Problem when unlinking @delete_files: $!"; # error
> No such file or directory at..

What you _want_ unlink to see is the list of absolute paths:

unlink '/floppy/file1', /floppy/file2', ...

You could get that with (untested):

unlink map { "/floppy/$_" } @delete_files;


--
Tad McClellan SGML consulting
[email]tadmc@augustmail.com[/email] Perl programming
Fort Worth, Texas

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson]

Tony wrote:

> I would like to use the full pathname with the unlink
> function but it doesn't seem to work that way?

Yes it does. You do not need to chdir to the directory where the files
to be deleted are.

> These don't work.
>
> chdir '/floppy' or die "Can't cd to /floppy: $!\n";
> unlink "/floppy/@delete_files" or warn

---------^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

If the array @delete_files would include the elements 'file1.txt' and
'file2.txt', that expression tries to do:

unlink '/floppy/file1.txt file2.txt'

which obviously cannot work.

You can try to just do this (chmod not necessary):

for (@delete_files) {
unlink "/floppy/$_" or warn $!;
}

--
Gunnar Hjalmarsson
Email: [url]http://www.gunnar.cc/cgi-bin/contact.pl[/url]