How do I list the files in a directory?
You want a list of all the files, or all the files matching a certain pattern, or with a certain ending, in a directory
The solution
Reading directories is a bit like reading files. First you open the directory, then you read from it and then you close it. You use a directory handle much as you use a file handle.
Step 1: Opening the directory
To open the directory, we use a function called opendir. You use this much like the open function to open files. In the example below, we open the /tmp directory:
Step 2: Reading the directory
To read the files and directories in the directory we use the readdir function. readdir returns the name of each file or directory in the opened directory in turn when used in scalar context, or a list of the names of all files and directories in that directory when used in list context. This means that we can use readdir in a foreach loop (or any other loop construct):
Step 3: Closing the directory
We use the function closedir to close the directory once we are finished with it. Like files, the directory will be closed when the program terminates, but sometimes you will need to explicitly close the directory:
Directory Listing
Provided your program has sufficient access to the directory being read, readdir will list every file and directory contained in that directory. However, you often will not want all files or directories. For example, it is quite common to exclude all filenames beginning with a period:
See further down for a more compact way of doing this.
Find the directories
Sometimes you may want to find all the directories in a directory. Remember that readdir() gives you the names of the files and directories, not the paths. If you want to test a file using any of the standard file tests, you need to use the full path:
Find files ending in…
Quite often you want to find all files ending in a given suffix. For example, you may want to find all files ending in .txt:
An advanced example
A more advanced example is to use grep to filter out the files you want. The following example (based on a code sample from perldoc -f readdir) gets all the files (not directories) beginning with a period from the open directory. The filenames are found in the array @dots.
File::Find
You can use the File::Find module to recursively search through a directory (or directories). It is best used when you want to perform some operation on each file. See perldoc File::Find for more information.
glob
Another way of getting a directory listing – if you’re only interested in the current directory and not in any sub-directories – is to use glob. You can pass glob a pattern (or patterns) to match and it will return any files that match. The example below will list all .pl and .pm files in the current directory: