Perl doesn't glob filename wildcards?

[Sheldon Smith]

Hello, Perl gurus!

I'm running ActivePerl's Perl 5.10.1 on a Windows (Vista) platform. I'm trying to write a simple script to read and process multiple text files. I can pass a enumerated list of file names, but wildcards don't work.

Here's my program reduced to the essentials (read specified files, print last line):

----- myprog.pl -----
while (<>) {
$line = $_ if ($_ ne '');
}
print $line;
-----

> perl myprog.pl test1.txt test2.txt test3.txt
prints the last line of test3.txt.

> perl myprog.pl test*.txt
fails: Can't open test*.txt: Invalid argument at myprog.pl line 1.

Question: Isn't filename globbing tied to the diamond input operator?

Question: Is there a way to have the diamond operator handle the filename glob?

[Andrew C Fieldsend · Accepted solution]

It's a Windows thing, I'm afraid. Perl comes from a UNIX background, where filename globbing is done by the shell before passing the resulting list of filenames to the program. Windows doesn't do filename globbing in the shell - each program is expected to handle the arguments as given, and do any wildcard handling itself.

Take a look at the Perl "glob" function for how to do this.

[Sheldon Smith]

Thanks, Andrew.

After some study of the "glob" function, for the simple case of just filenames and name-globs passed as arguments, the use of 'glob' reduces to the following:

----- myprog.pl -----
@ARGV = <@ARGV>;

# then the rest of the program:
while (<>) {
$line = $_ if ($_ ne '');
}
print $line;
-----