deleting directories

[gitarwmn]

I'm trying to delete a certain set of directories using

use File::Remove qw(remove);
remove \1, "dir";

The way the script is setup is to delete all but the 5 oldest. The problem seems to be that its deleting all the directories includign the 5 I don't want deleted. Does anyone have any insight as to why it is deleting everything instead of the directories I'm trying to specify? This is on a Windows system. Thanks

Here is my code...

use strict;
use warnings;
use Mail::Sendmail;
use File::Remove qw(remove);

main();
sub main{
    my $project = 'crm';
    my $purgecnt = 0;
    my @dirlist = '';
    my $OUT = "out.txt";

    # generate directoy listing of builds
    #
    print "\nGenerating directory output to $OUT...\n";
    system("dir /b C:\\builds\\Vnet\\$project\\ > $OUT");
    print "\n";
    open( FP, "$OUT" ) or die "Can't open $OUT file for reading.\n";
    while(my $line = <FP> ){
        next if ($line =~ /^\s*$/);    # blank lines
        push (@dirlist, $line);
    }
    close FP;
    #remove last 5 builds from the purge list
    for(my $i=0; $i < 5; $i++){
        chomp (my $temp = pop @dirlist);
        if ($temp){
            print "Skippping: $temp\n";
        }
    }
    my $ra_dirlist = \@dirlist;
    #print "directories to delete @$ra_dirlist\n";
    # purge each item in dirlist
    #
    print "\n";
    foreach my $item (@dirlist){
        my $tree = "C:\\builds\\Vnet\\$project\\$item";
        if($item eq $dirlist[-1]){
            print "Purging: $item\n";
            remove \1, $tree;
            last;
        }
        $purgecnt++;
        print "Purging: $item\n";
        remove \1, $tree;
    }
    print "\n";
    print "\nDone:  Purged $purgecnt directories\n";

 }

[Tanktalus]

First off, I'd suggest getting rid of the system/open/while/close code. Use glob and sort instead. Then there also won't be any \n's.

Then, instead of popping 5 times, just splice off the end.

Finally, I'm not sure about File::Remove, but File::Path also has a rmpath function which would do the same trick.

Debugging trick: don't actually remove anything in your code until you've proven it to work. Use print "Pseudo-deleting $tree"; first. Make sure the five you don't want there aren't there.

[bofh_of_oz]

Firstly, drop that main() prototype - it doesn't do anything besides cluttering the code...

You don't need to list directories by redirecting output of system to a file and reading it - use glob. Here's what you can do:

use strict;
use warnings;
use File::Glob;

my @dirs;

chdir "C:/builds/Vnet/crm";
for (glob("*")) {push @dirs, $_ if -d;}
remove \1, $dirs[$_] for (0..$#dirs-5);

That's supposed to move to the vorking directory, get the list of the subdirectories, and delete everything but the last 5. Assuming you have them properly named, those last 5 directories are what you wanna see untouched.

 

Note: I never dealt with remove so I'm not sure if it works as you want it to... I tested it with print statement and it worked fine...

[gitarwmn]

Very cool, thanks!