Put "ls" in array

[PatricF]

Hi, I'm totally new to Perl and I'm making a script and need some help. I'm on Linux and I want to put the output of "ls" into an array. How do I do this? I need to be able to do something like this:
print @array[2]
And it will output the third file/directory if you know what I mean.

[jethro]

You can get the output of system commands like ls into an array with this:

my @array= `ls`;

Note that these are backticks, not the normal quotes. Also you might use chomp() afterwards on the array to remove the line endings

In your case it would also be possible to use opendir()/readdir() to read a directory like a file

The order of the files on disk will look pretty random to you by the way (at least if you have deleted and created lots of files in this directory already, otherwise they might be in order of creation). If you want to sort them, perl has a sort() function as well

[bimleshsharma]

It's totally depends on your requirment. If you simply want to push into array and list then here is snippet..

my @dir= `ls`;
print "\n @dir";

output:

 #test#
 allcases
 bin
 codebase
 core
 execute_dir
 nonqa
 precutoff
 reversal
 stamp1
 stamp2
 start_epicDB.pl
 test.pl
 test.sh

[pelagic]

Have a look at File::Next or alternativeley use readdir ...

[serf]

The answer really depends on whether you're trying to learn about populating arrays and are using the output of ls as an example, or trying to list files in a directory and get those into your program.

If the main aim is to get the list of files into your program, I'd recommend pelagic's answer. The opendir documentation has boilerplate code that you can copy into your program and modify to suit your needs. It's normally better in terms of efficiency, powerfulness and control over what's going on to do things like this internally in Perl (which is what opendir does) where you can, rather than running an external shell command to get the same data and then parsing its text output.

If you're learning about arrays, then the backticks & the glob work, as would using an open which allows you to process the output of the command on the way into your array.

e.g.:

#!/usr/bin/perl
#
#
#
use warnings;
use strict;

my @files;

open (my $ls_fh, "/bin/ls|") || die "Can't run '/bin/ls': $!\n";
while (defined (my $line = <$ls_fh>)) {

    #
    next if $line =~ /pattern_I_want_to_ignore/;
    chomp $line;
    push @files, $line;

}
close $ls_fh;

print "Third file: $files[2]\n";

for my $file ( @files ) {
    print "$file\n";
}

[JavaFan]

What a bunch of lines! If I wanted to ignore some pattern, why not:

my @files = grep {!/pattern_I_want_to_ignore/} `ls`;

Or for the grasshoppers who haven't realized yet that Perl started its life as a glue language, and never deviated from that, and hence get the rashes as soon as they see a call to an external program:

use autodie;
opendir my $dir, ".";
my @files = grep {!/pattern_I_want_to_ignore/}
            sort grep {!/^\./} # simulate ls
            readdir $dir;

[hperange]

Hello, You could do so via the glob operator.

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

my @list = glob(".* *");

print $_, "\n" for (@list);

[DrHyde]

What have you tried so far, what do you think it should have done, and how does what it actually did differ from what you expected?

[xiaoyafeng]

for a beginner, I recommend File::Find::Rule for this usage. below is some examples grasp from its synopsis:

# find all the subdirectories of a given directory
  my @subdirs = File::Find::Rule->directory->in( $directory );

  # find all the .pm files in @INC
  my @files = File::Find::Rule->file()
                              ->name( '*.pm' )
                              ->in( @INC );