Question

I use Perl on Linux, but I started using File::Spec->catfile to make my perl code run on Windows as well, e.g.,

$tmp = File::Spec->catfile($ENV{HOME}, "tmp");

instead of

$tmp = "$ENV{HOME}/tmp";

But how can I make the following code portable:

my @files = <$ENV{HOME}/tmp/*>;

It uses slashes as file separators, so I assume it won’t work on Windows. And I don’t see how to use File::Spec->catfile in that expression?

Answer 1

Since catfile just returns a string that can be used as a file name, you can do something like this (untested):

$tmp = File::Spec->catfile($ENV{HOME}, "tmp", "*");
my @files = glob $tmp;

But $ENV{HOME} isn’t likely to be set on a Windows system.

You might consider using File::Spec->tmpdir().