Question

I am trying to accomplish two things with a Perl script. I have a file, which in the first subdirectory has different user directories, and in each of these user directories contains some folders that have text files in them. I am trying to write a Perl script that

1. Lists the directories for each user
2. Gets the total number of .txt files

For the second objective I have this code

my @emails = glob "$dir/*.txt";
for (0..$#emails){
    $emails[$_] =~ s/\.txt$//;
}
$emails=@emails;

but $emails is returning 0. Any insight?

Answer 1

Typically, using glob is not very good idea when it comes to processing files in directories and possible subdirectories.
Much better way is to use File::Find module, like this:

use File::Find;

my @emails;

File::Find::find(
    {
        # this will be called for each file under $dir:
        wanted => sub {
            my $file = $File::Find::name;
            return unless -f $file and $file =~ /\.txt$/;
            # this file looks like email, remember it:
            push @emails, $file;
        }
    },
    $dir
);

print "Found " . scalar @emails . " .txt files (emails) in '$dir'\n";