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Subject Author Date
Windows paths in glob Dmitry 03-30-2008
Posted by Dmitry on March 31, 2008, 1:58 am
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> On Sun, 30 Mar 2008 19:09:18 +0000, Dmitry wrote:
>
>> OK, so there's a well-known difficulty with handling Windows-style paths
>> in glob: it doesn't like backslashes, nor does it like spaces. One
>> solution to that is to use Unix-style paths:
>>
>> glob('C:\Documents and Settings\*'); # Doesn't work glob('C:/Documents\
>> and\ Settings/*'); # Works
>>
>> Problem is, the rest of Perl's built-in file-handling functionality
>> behaves the other way around. For instance, with -d:
>>
>> -d 'C:\Documents and Settings'; # Works -d 'C:/Documents\ and\
>> Settings'; # Doesn't work
>>
>> Question: is there any way to use the same path string with glob and
>> with the rest of Perl, without having to convert them back and forth?
>
> I don't have Windows to test here, but I recall that using either a
> forward slash '/' or a backward slash -- properly escaped -- '\' works
> either way in both situations.
>
> In the examples you gave, the versions with backslashes cannot work, the
> backslashes are not escaped.
>
> M4

Spaces are a more serious problem than slashes. But anyway, the examples work,
because I used single quotes. BTW, current core glob seems to ignore
backslashes
altogether, unless they escape something other than a backslash.

Posted by Gunnar Hjalmarsson on March 30, 2008, 4:05 pm
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 Dmitry wrote:
> OK, so there's a well-known difficulty with handling Windows-style paths in
glob: it doesn't
> like backslashes, nor does it like spaces. One solution to that is to use
Unix-style paths:
>
> glob('C:\Documents and Settings\*'); # Doesn't work
> glob('C:/Documents\ and\ Settings/*'); # Works
>
> Problem is, the rest of Perl's built-in file-handling functionality behaves
the other way around.
> For instance, with -d:
>
> -d 'C:\Documents and Settings'; # Works
> -d 'C:/Documents\ and\ Settings'; # Doesn't work
>
> Question: is there any way to use the same path string with glob and with the
rest of Perl,
> without having to convert them back and forth?

A long time ago I decided to use opendir() and readdir() instead of
glob(). It may not be as 'elegant', but it works flawlessly without
escaping spaces.

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

Posted by Ben Morrow on March 30, 2008, 6:48 pm
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>
> A long time ago I decided to use opendir() and readdir() instead of
> glob(). It may not be as 'elegant', but it works flawlessly without
> escaping spaces.

To save Uri the trouble of pointing it out :), File::Slurp now has a
read_dir function.

Ben


Posted by Uri Guttman on March 30, 2008, 7:20 pm
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>>
>> A long time ago I decided to use opendir() and readdir() instead of
>> glob(). It may not be as 'elegant', but it works flawlessly without
>> escaping spaces.

BM> To save Uri the trouble of pointing it out :), File::Slurp now has a
BM> read_dir function.

it has always had a read_dir function! its advantages are a simpler API
(no need for a handle, opendir, closedir calls) and it filters out . and
.. for you. a minor disadvantage (and very minor IMO) is that it can't
iterate in scalar mode so you get one dir entry at a time. that would
only matter if your dir was enormous and i mean very big.

future plans include passing in a regex or code ref to filter for
you. yeah, you can use grep on the output but it is slightly shorter
that way.

uri

--
Uri Guttman ------ uri@stemsystems.com -------- http://www.sysarch.com --
----- Perl Code Review , Architecture, Development, Training, Support ------
--------- Free Perl Training --- http://perlhunter.com/college.html ---------
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Posted by Dmitry on March 31, 2008, 2:09 am
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> Dmitry wrote:
>> OK, so there's a well-known difficulty with handling Windows-style
>> paths in glob: it doesn't like backslashes, nor does it like spaces.
>> One solution to that is to use Unix-style paths:
>>
>> glob('C:\Documents and Settings\*'); # Doesn't work
>> glob('C:/Documents\ and\ Settings/*'); # Works
>>
>> Problem is, the rest of Perl's built-in file-handling functionality
>> behaves the other way around. For instance, with -d:
>>
>> -d 'C:\Documents and Settings'; # Works
>> -d 'C:/Documents\ and\ Settings'; # Doesn't work
>>
>> Question: is there any way to use the same path string with glob and
>> with the rest of Perl, without having to convert them back and forth?
>
> A long time ago I decided to use opendir() and readdir() instead of
> glob(). It may not be as 'elegant', but it works flawlessly without
> escaping spaces.
>

OK, thanks. I guess if I wanted to process wildcards in the file name, I would
pass them
through grep?

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