Question

Is there any guarantee that the array of filenames returned from a glob (e.g. <*>) will be sorted?

I can’t find that sorting is mentioned one way or the other in the documentation, but it seems to be the case in every directory I’ve tried it on.

I’m talking about using this syntax:

@files = <*>;

If I need the files to be sorted, would the below be redundant?

@files = sort(<*>);

Answer 1

In Perl 5.6.0 and newer, filenames are sorted:

Beginning with v5.6.0, this operator
is implemented using the standard
File::Glob extension.

— perldoc for glob

By default, the pathnames are sorted
in ascending ASCII order.

— perldoc for File::Glob

There is one catch:

By default, file names are assumed to
be case sensitive

— perldoc for File::Glob

Having said all that, you can change this behavior to sort case-insensitively with

use File::Glob qw(:globally :nocase);

Note that :globally is redundant since 5.6.0, but this will work on older versions as well.

Alternately, if you just want to do a single glob with case-insensitivity:

use File::Glob ':glob';

@files = bsd_glob('*', GLOB_NOCASE);