Windows backslash problem

[martymart]

Fellow Monks,
Using Activestate perl on Windows2000. I've a script which has a system call, for DOS the command would be:

copy a\b\*.txt a\

Which works fine, but putting it into a system call from a perl script was a bit more difficult.I tried a number of backslash & forward slash variations, but the one that eventually worked for was

system ("copy a\\b\\*.txt a/");

Can anybody explain to me what exactly is going on here??
Also, how could the same be achieved using the copy command. I tried:

copy("copy a\\b\\*.txt ","a/");

But got nowhere with that, any ideas I would be grateful.
Martymart

[Mr. Muskrat]

I would recommend using File::Copy:


use File::Copy;
copy("a/b/*.txt","a/");

Update: I forgot that File::Copy doesn't do globs...


use File::Copy;
my @list = <a/b/*.txt>;
foreach my $file (@list) {
  copy($file,"a/");
}

[martymart]

Hi Mr. Muskrat, I just tried your suggestion:

use File::Copy;
copy("a/b/*.txt","a/");

unfortunately it doesn't seem to work for me. It works fine for an individual file, say:

use File::Copy;
copy("a/b/ccc.txt","a/");

not a problem, but when the * is put in it doesn't seem to do its job. Any ideas?

[martymart]

sorry, spotted a typo, third code block should read copy("copy a\\b\\*.txt","a/"); no space after the *.txt

[Gilimanjaro]

copy("copy a\\b\\*.txt ","a/");
      ^^^^^

Can't be right, right? Looks like a copied&pasted system command, but the copy & space should leave town by dawn...