find( {
        preprocess => sub { sort { $a <=> $b || $a cmp $b } @_ },
        wanted => sub { next if /^\.+$/...}
    },
    $dir
);
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Tht worked wonders.. Thanks a lot ysth. I think I would be more on perlmonks in coming months, since I might have to script a lot in coming weeks

Either that, or if there are many files that will be skipped by the regexp, sort the results just before returning them.

   return sort {$a <=> $b} @messages;
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• another intruder with the mooring in the heart of the Perl

If you had warnings enabled then you would have received the message Exiting subroutine via next at YOUR_PROGRAM line N.

You need to use return to exit from a subroutine instead.

Another tip: In the find sub, $_ is equivalent to File::Find::name, so you could do:

find sub { push @messages, $_  if (-d $_ && !/^\.+$/); }, $dir
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In the find sub, $_ is equivalent to File::Find::name

Nope. $_ holds the name relative to the current directory at the time of the subroutine call, which in the default case has been chdir'ed to the location of the file. But $File::Find::name is always relative to the original directory.

So they aren't the same. Definitely different uses. You can use $_ inside the subroutine, but if you want to save the name for later, you want to use $File::Find::name. And in fact, it'd be wrong to use $File::Find::name within the subroutine, because your relative name would have been applied twice. Ouch.

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker

merlyn, Thanks for clarifying. I was hesitant to say "equivalent"; even to say anything other than "you can shorten your code..." And now I've reread the doc, a Good Thing.

I've reread the OP too, and I think the claimed output is misleading. Surely it is more like the following? (In which case my suggestion can be stricken, as it would only yield the files.)

/path/to/File 1
/path/to/File 10
/path/to/File 100
/path/to/File 2
/path/to/File 20
...
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Whew.

File 1
File 10
File 100
File 2
File 20
File 21

It's obviously sorted alphanum.
You expected to sort by comparison, by.. is two greater than, 100. It's not greater ammount, but 100 does come before 2 alphanumerically. Just wanted to point that out- because this is a bug in the coder, not the code.

If you want to be able to sort files like these as you expect, one thing to do is name them appropriately...

# rename ' ' ' 00' File\ ?; rename ' ' ' 0' File\ ??
# ls -1 File\ *
File 001
File 002
File 010
File 020
File 021
File 100