File::Find(3pm) Perl Programmers Reference Guide File::Find(3pm)
NAME
File::Find - Traverse a directory tree.
SYNOPSIS
use File::Find;
find(\&wanted, @directories_to_search);
sub wanted { ... }
use File::Find;
finddepth(\&wanted, @directories_to_search);
sub wanted { ... }
use File::Find;
find({ wanted => \&process, follow => 1 }, '.');
DESCRIPTION
These are functions for searching through directory trees doing work on
each file found similar to the Unix find command. File::Find exports
two functions, "find" and "finddepth". They work similarly but have
subtle differences.
find
find(\&wanted, @directories);
find(\%options, @directories);
"find()" does a depth-first search over the given @directories in
the order they are given. For each file or directory found, it
calls the &wanted subroutine. (See below for details on how to use
the &wanted function). Additionally, for each directory found, it
will "chdir()" into that directory and continue the search,
invoking the &wanted function on each file or subdirectory in the
directory.
finddepth
finddepth(\&wanted, @directories);
finddepth(\%options, @directories);
"finddepth()" works just like "find()" except that it invokes the
&wanted function for a directory after invoking it for the
directory's contents. It does a postorder traversal instead of a
preorder traversal, working from the bottom of the directory tree
up where "find()" works from the top of the tree down.
%options
The first argument to "find()" is either a code reference to your
&wanted function, or a hash reference describing the operations to be
performed for each file. The code reference is described in "The
wanted function" below.
Here are the possible keys for the hash:
"wanted"
The value should be a code reference. This code reference is
described in "The wanted function" below. The &wanted subroutine is
mandatory.
"bydepth"
Reports the name of a directory only AFTER all its entries have been
reported. Entry point "finddepth()" is a shortcut for specifying "{
bydepth => 1 }" in the first argument of "find()".
"preprocess"
The value should be a code reference. This code reference is used to
preprocess the current directory. The name of the currently
processed directory is in $File::Find::dir. Your preprocessing
function is called after "readdir()", but before the loop that calls
the "wanted()" function. It is called with a list of strings
(actually file/directory names) and is expected to return a list of
strings. The code can be used to sort the file/directory names
alphabetically, numerically, or to filter out directory entries
based on their name alone. When follow or follow_fast are in effect,
"preprocess" is a no-op.
"postprocess"
The value should be a code reference. It is invoked just before
leaving the currently processed directory. It is called in void
context with no arguments. The name of the current directory is in
$File::Find::dir. This hook is handy for summarizing a directory,
such as calculating its disk usage. When follow or follow_fast are
in effect, "postprocess" is a no-op.
"follow"
Causes symbolic links to be followed. Since directory trees with
symbolic links (followed) may contain files more than once and may
even have cycles, a hash has to be built up with an entry for each
file. This might be expensive both in space and time for a large
directory tree. See "follow_fast" and "follow_skip" below. If
either follow or follow_fast is in effect:
o It is guaranteed that an lstat has been called before the
user's "wanted()" function is called. This enables fast file
checks involving "_". Note that this guarantee no longer
holds if follow or follow_fast are not set.
o There is a variable $File::Find::fullname which holds the
absolute pathname of the file with all symbolic links
resolved. If the link is a dangling symbolic link, then
fullname will be set to "undef".
This is a no-op on Win32.
"follow_fast"
This is similar to follow except that it may report some files more
than once. It does detect cycles, however. Since only symbolic
links have to be hashed, this is much cheaper both in space and
time. If processing a file more than once (by the user's "wanted()"
function) is worse than just taking time, the option follow should
be used.
This is also a no-op on Win32.
"follow_skip"
"follow_skip==1", which is the default, causes all files which are
neither directories nor symbolic links to be ignored if they are
about to be processed a second time. If a directory or a symbolic
link are about to be processed a second time, File::Find dies.
"follow_skip==0" causes File::Find to die if any file is about to be
processed a second time.
"follow_skip==2" causes File::Find to ignore any duplicate files and
directories but to proceed normally otherwise.
"dangling_symlinks"
Specifies what to do with symbolic links whose target doesn't exist.
If true and a code reference, will be called with the symbolic link
name and the directory it lives in as arguments. Otherwise, if true
and warnings are on, a warning of the form "symbolic_link_name is a
dangling symbolic link\n" will be issued. If false, the dangling
symbolic link will be silently ignored.
"no_chdir"
Does not "chdir()" to each directory as it recurses. The "wanted()"
function will need to be aware of this, of course. In this case, $_
will be the same as $File::Find::name.
"untaint"
If find is used in taint-mode (-T command line switch or if EUID !=
UID or if EGID != GID), then internally directory names have to be
untainted before they can be "chdir"'d to. Therefore they are
checked against a regular expression untaint_pattern. Note that all
names passed to the user's "wanted()" function are still tainted. If
this option is used while not in taint-mode, "untaint" is a no-op.
"untaint_pattern"
See above. This should be set using the "qr" quoting operator. The
default is set to "qr|^([-+@\w./]+)$|". Note that the parentheses
are vital.
"untaint_skip"
If set, a directory which fails the untaint_pattern is skipped,
including all its sub-directories. The default is to "die" in such a
case.
The wanted function
The "wanted()" function does whatever verifications you want on each
file and directory. Note that despite its name, the "wanted()"
function is a generic callback function, and does not tell File::Find
if a file is "wanted" or not. In fact, its return value is ignored.
The wanted function takes no arguments but rather does its work through
a collection of variables.
$File::Find::dir is the current directory name,
$_ is the current filename within that directory
$File::Find::name is the complete pathname to the file.
The above variables have all been localized and may be changed without
affecting data outside of the wanted function.
For example, when examining the file /some/path/foo.ext you will have:
$File::Find::dir = /some/path/
$_ = foo.ext
$File::Find::name = /some/path/foo.ext
You are chdir()'d to $File::Find::dir when the function is called,
unless "no_chdir" was specified. Note that when changing to directories
is in effect, the root directory (/) is a somewhat special case
inasmuch as the concatenation of $File::Find::dir, '/' and $_ is not
literally equal to $File::Find::name. The table below summarizes all
variants:
$File::Find::name $File::Find::dir $_
default / / .
no_chdir=>0 /etc / etc
/etc/x /etc x
no_chdir=>1 / / /
/etc / /etc
/etc/x /etc /etc/x
When "follow" or "follow_fast" are in effect, there is also a
$File::Find::fullname. The function may set $File::Find::prune to
prune the tree unless "bydepth" was specified. Unless "follow" or
"follow_fast" is specified, for compatibility reasons (find.pl,
find2perl) there are in addition the following globals available:
$File::Find::topdir, $File::Find::topdev, $File::Find::topino,
$File::Find::topmode and $File::Find::topnlink.
This library is useful for the "find2perl" tool (distributed as part of
the App-find2perl CPAN distribution), which when fed,
find2perl / -name .nfs\* -mtime +7 \
-exec rm -f {} \; -o -fstype nfs -prune
produces something like:
sub wanted {
/^\.nfs.*\z/s &&
(($dev, $ino, $mode, $nlink, $uid, $gid) = lstat($_)) &&
int(-M _) > 7 &&
unlink($_)
||
($nlink || (($dev, $ino, $mode, $nlink, $uid, $gid) = lstat($_))) &&
$dev < 0 &&
($File::Find::prune = 1);
}
Notice the "_" in the above "int(-M _)": the "_" is a magical
filehandle that caches the information from the preceding "stat()",
"lstat()", or filetest.
Here's another interesting wanted function. It will find all symbolic
links that don't resolve:
sub wanted {
-l && !-e && print "bogus link: $File::Find::name\n";
}
Note that you may mix directories and (non-directory) files in the list
of directories to be searched by the "wanted()" function.
find(\&wanted, "./foo", "./bar", "./baz/epsilon");
In the example above, no file in ./baz/ other than ./baz/epsilon will
be evaluated by "wanted()".
See also the script "pfind" on CPAN for a nice application of this
module.
WARNINGS
If you run your program with the "-w" switch, or if you use the
"warnings" pragma, File::Find will report warnings for several weird
situations. You can disable these warnings by putting the statement
no warnings 'File::Find';
in the appropriate scope. See warnings for more info about lexical
warnings.
CAVEAT
$dont_use_nlink
You can set the variable $File::Find::dont_use_nlink to 1 if you want
to force File::Find to always stat directories. This was used for
file systems that do not have an "nlink" count matching the number of
sub-directories. Examples are ISO-9660 (CD-ROM), AFS, HPFS (OS/2
file system), FAT (DOS file system) and a couple of others.
You shouldn't need to set this variable, since File::Find should now
detect such file systems on-the-fly and switch itself to using stat.
This works even for parts of your file system, like a mounted CD-ROM.
If you do set $File::Find::dont_use_nlink to 1, you will notice slow-
downs.
symlinks
Be aware that the option to follow symbolic links can be dangerous.
Depending on the structure of the directory tree (including symbolic
links to directories) you might traverse a given (physical) directory
more than once (only if "follow_fast" is in effect). Furthermore,
deleting or changing files in a symbolically linked directory might
cause very unpleasant surprises, since you delete or change files in
an unknown directory.
BUGS AND CAVEATS
Despite the name of the "finddepth()" function, both "find()" and
"finddepth()" perform a depth-first search of the directory hierarchy.
HISTORY
File::Find used to produce incorrect results if called recursively.
During the development of perl 5.8 this bug was fixed. The first fixed
version of File::Find was 1.01.
SEE ALSO
find(1), find2perl.
perl v5.26.3 2018-03-01 File::Find(3pm)
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