Net::MirrorDir help

[sunnyfedora99]

Howdy Perl Monks, I'm trying to use the Perl Module Net::MirrorDir to compare local and remote directories. But in some cases I have file names with spaces between them and i can't get it compare the dir's. Is it possible to do compare directories when there are file names with spaces between them? Here is what i've got now:

sub compare_dirs {
    
    my ($host, $login, $password, $dir, $rmt_dir) = @_;
    
    my $md = Net::MirrorDir->new(
        ftpserver       => $host,
        user            => $login,
        pass            => $password,
        localdir        => $dir,
        remotedir       => $rmt_dir,
        debug           => 0, # 1 for yes, 0 for no
        timeout         => 60 # default 30
    );
    
    $md->Connect();
    my ($ref_h_local_files, $ref_h_local_dirs) = $md->ReadLocalDir();
    my ($ref_h_remote_files, $ref_h_remote_dirs) = $md->ReadRemoteDir(
+);
    
    my $ref_a_local_files_not_in_remote = $md->LocalNotInRemote(
       $ref_h_local_files, 
       $ref_h_remote_files
       );
       
    my $ref_a_remote_files_not_in_local = $md->RemoteNotInLocal(
       $ref_h_local_files, 
       $ref_h_remote_files
       );
    
    #transfer remote files which are not on local system
    foreach my $new_remote_file_not_in_local (@{$ref_a_remote_files_no
+t_in_local}) {
    #transfer the files from remote site to local
    print "$new_remote_file_not_in_local... \n";
    }
    #transfer local files not on remote system
    foreach my $new_local_file_not_in_remote (@{$ref_a_local_files_not
+_in_remote}) {
    #transfer files from local site to remote site
    print "$new_local_file_not_in_remote... \n";
    }
}

any help is appreciated. Cheers

[toolic]

Do you get more information if you enable debugging?

        debug           => 1, # 1 for yes, 0 for no

Poke around in the source code of the Net::MirrorDir module. It uses readdir which should handle filenames with spaces, but the following line looks suspicious:

@info = split(/\s+/, $line);

What you describe seems like a bug, which you can report.

[sunnyfedora99]

Setting Debug to 1 gives me the following output of the 'readdir'

returnvalues from <dir(/dir3)>
-rw-r-----    1 ftp      ftp        420730 Nov 17 10:38 file with spac
+e.pdf
-rw-r-----    1 ftp      ftp           956 Nov 16 16:33 mail.txt

But when it shows the file which doesn't match it show the following:

/dir3/space.pdf...

I've opened up a bug case, to get this issue fixed.

[Corion]

A cursory glance at the module source reveals this gem:

...
         for my $line (@{$ra_lines})
             {
            @info = split(/\s+/, $line);
             $name = $info[$#info];
                        ...

So yes, filenames containing spaces are broken. A potential fix might be

            @info = split(/\s+/, $line, 9); # 9 columns in FTP output

... if one could be sure that each FTP server would return 9 columns of output. Another alternative could be to rely on the file date/time as a marker, or to try a fixed width parser for the ftp output, and checking that split /\s+/ always returns the same number of items.

[toolic]

Here is a quote from the "Changes" file...

0.14 Sat Feb 23 10:36:50 2008 
     - using the function "$self->{_connection}->dir($dir)" to the sea
+rch of the directory
     the FTP-server should return the following format as response of 
+the LIST command:
     -r--r--r--   1 ftpuser  ftpusers       576 Feb 23 09:23 file.txt
     drwxrwxr-x   2 ftpuser  ftpusers       512 Feb 21 13:54 Dir1
     Directory- or filenames should not contain any white space.
     - add some tests

It looks like the author was aware of the limitation.