Re: Can't remove directory-Permission denied

[kennethk]

I'm pretty sure you never want to delete your working directory; and I'm pretty sure that's what the warning says you are trying to do. I would suggest including a line in your unwanted routine that says something like return unless /[^.]/;.

[tye]

return unless /[^.]/;

I'm not unsure that it isn't impossible to avoid not including more negations without having to avoid a lack of not trying.

return if /^\.{1,2}\z/;

The 'return' still represents one implied negation ("don't do the following"). Each additional negation adds the chance for mentally dropping the negation and introducing a bug or wasting too much time getting very confused.

It also doesn't skip directories named "...". :) And, of course, that code is assuming a Unix or Windows file system.

[Athanasius]

I'm not unsure that it isn't impossible to avoid not including more negations without having to avoid a lack of not trying.

Clarity itself to a logician, certainly, but — on the offchance that some following along at home might need a little help — let Perl elucidate:

#! perl
use strict;
use warnings;

my $str1 =  "I'm not unsure that it isn't impossible to " .
            "avoid not including more negations without " .
            "having to avoid a lack of not trying.";
my $str2 =  $str1;
my %negs = ("not un"                  => "",
            "it isn't im"             => "it's ",
            "avoid not including"     => "include",
            "without having to avoid" => "by",
            "a lack of not"           => "");

# Collapse double negatives
while (my ($key, $value) = each %negs)
{
    $str2 =~ s/$key/$value/g;
}

# Remove extra spaces
$str2 =~ s/\s+/ /g;

# Display the translation
print "$str1\n\n-->\n\n$str2\n";

(Is there anything Perl can’t do?)

[Lotus1]

To match '.' don't you need to use '\.' or [.] ?

[tye]

Indeed. I had [.] then changed it to \.. I suspect the \ accidentally got dropped when I further updated the regex. Sorry about that. Fixed now. Thanks.