Question

So my program is supposed to recursively go through a directory and then for each file in the directory, open up the file and search for the words “error” “fail” and “failed.” Then it should write the instances where these words occur, as well as the rest of the characters on the line after those words, out to a file designated in the command prompt. I have been having some trouble making sure the program performs the search on the files that are found in the directory. Right now it does recurse through the directory and even creates a file to write out to, however, it does not seem to be searching through the files found in the recursing. Here is my code:

#!/usr/local/bin/perl

use warnings;
use strict;
use File::Find;


my $argument2 = $ARGV[0];
my $dir = "c:/program/Scripts/Directory1"; #directory to search through

open FILE, ">>$argument2" or die $!;   #file to write out 
my $unsuccessful = 0;
my @errors = ();
my @failures= ();
my @failures2 = ();
my @name = ();
my @file;
my $file;

my $filename;

opendir(DIR, $dir) or die $!;

while($file = readdir(DIR)){
next if($file =~ m/^\./);



foreach(0..$#file){
    print $_;
    open(FILELIST, '<', $_);    

    while(<FILELIST>){

    if (/Unsuccessful/i){
        $unsuccessful = 1;
    }
    if(/ERROR/ ){
        push(@errors, "ERROR in line $.\n");
        print  "\t\tERROR in line $.:$1\n" if (/Error\s+(.+)/);

    }
    if(/fail/i ){
        push(@failures, "ERROR in line $.\n");
        print FILE "ERROR in line $.:$1\n" if (/fail\s+(.+)/);

    }
    if(/failed/i ){
        push(@failures2, "ERROR in line $.\n");
        print FILE "ERROR in line $.:$1\n" if (/failed\s+(.+)/);

    }

    if ($unsuccessful){

    }

    }
    close FILELIST;


    }
}

closedir(DIR);
close FILE;

So, to clarify, my problem is that the search contained in the “while()” loop does not seem to be executing on the files found in the directory recursively. Any comments/suggestions/help that you can give on why this may be happening would be very helpful. I am new to Perl so some sample code would also just help me understand what you are trying to say. Thank you very much.

Answer 1

Typically, when I want to do something on recursive files, I start with find2perl . -print which generates the boilerplate for me with the wanted function from which I can modify to do whatever I want.

For example

# Traverse desired filesystems
File::Find::find({wanted => \&wanted}, '.');
exit;
sub wanted {
    return unless -f $File::Find::name;
    return unless -R $File::Find::name;
    open (F,"<",$File::Find::name) or warn("Error opening $File::Find::name : $!\n");

    while(<F>) {
        if(m/error/) { print; }
        if(m/fail/) { print; }
    }   
}