descending directories

[Ea]

My dirty code for descending subdirectories used the unix find command to generate a list of files to be acted on. In my case, to chmod files.

%perl -e '@list = `find . -name "*.htm"`; foreach (@list) {`chmod 644 
+$_`}'

[mischief]

or even:

find . -name "*.htm" -type file -exec perl -e 's/arse/tits/' {} \;

just to go even more off topic - your code, although an example, is kind of redunandant; using perl to use find to return a list for perl to use chmod on is unnecessary. all you really need to do is  find . -type file -exec chmod 644 {} \; (but then that's nothing really to do with perl, other than how not to use it. :-)

[Aristotle]

That will launch one Perl process per file - quite a waste of effort. find . -name '*.htm' -type f -print | xargs perl -i -pe's/foo/bar/' However, that will not work for files with newlines or spaces in their names due to the way xargs parses its input. On systems with the GNU renditions of these tools you should say this: find . -name '*.htm' -type f -print0 | xargs -0 perl -i -pe's/foo/bar/'

You will still have problems with filenames that start with a less-than or greater-than sign, possibly in combination with a plus sign, and those which start or end with a pipe, due to Perl's magic open.

For chmodding, the same principle applies to the Anonymonk's proposition:

find . -name '*.htm' -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 644

Makeshifts last the longest.

[Ea]

Ack! the space between {} \; is crucial, Damn! You get usage:  chmod [-fR] <absolute-mode> file ... when you write {}\; . (Yes, I did try find first, but panic struck) Thnx

[Anonymous Monk]

Why use perl at all for that? ;)

Perl's a great language, but no point going hybrid for something like this.

find . -name \*.htm -exec chmod 644 {} \;

pstickne
Use the right tool for the job