Question

I have a subroutine in Perl sub findfiles , I have to pass a quoted value “*/*” as input parameter since it complains without quoting ,on the other hand in my subroutine I needed it to be unquoted (may be!)The problem is when I print the value to check ,I don’t see any quote,or any thing but may be there are some special hidden character or something I don’t know ? My codes work properly when I use */*directly but not when I pass it as as an input parameter
Do you have any idea?

sub findfiles {

    $dirname=$_[0];
    my @temp = grep {-f} <$dirname>;
    print @temp;       

}
&findfiles("*/*"); doesnot work

but 
   sub findfiles {

    $dirname=$_[0];
    my @temp = grep {-f} <*/*>;
    print @temp;       

}

does its job

Answer 1

With your updated code, I can see where your error lies. While

my @temp = grep {-f} <*/*>;

Works as a glob

my @temp = grep {-f} <$dirname>;

Is interpreted as a readline() on the file handle $dirname.

If you want to avoid ambiguity you can use the function for glob:

my @temp = grep -f, glob $dirname;

You might also be interested in using File::Find, which finds files recursively.

NOTE: This problem could have been avoided if you had warnings turned on. As a rule of thumb, coding in perl without using

use strict;
use warnings;

…is a very bad idea. These two pragmas will help you identify problems with your code.