From this week's Perl course:

opendir(DH, ".");
while ($igot = readdir(DH)) {
  next if ($igot =~ /^\.{1,2}$/);
  print "igot $igot\n";
}

You'll notice that I have used a regular expression to check for files called dot and dot-dot, which are the current and parent directory, as I typically would NOT want to process each of them in my loop.

Other alternatives ... this is Perl so "There is more than one way" ... include:

@files = glob("*");

@files = <*>

@files = `ls`

but although each of these is shorter, they are not recommended for heavy directory traversal applications - in each case, they return you a sorted list of names and that sorting can be useful for a single directory, but wasteful in a heavier application that's going through a large number of directories.


Once you are traversing a directory, you can do all sorts of things - use operators such as -d to find out what is a subdirectory, and -s to find the size of individual contents, for example.

If you want to find the biggest file in or below a directory (perhaps you're running out of disc space?), we have a sample program here from our Perl for larger projects course. The illustration with accompanies this article shows delegates on a private Perl training course, running at their offices in the UK.
(written 2008-10-11, updated 2010-06-23)

 P602 - Perl - Advanced File and Directory Handling
  [839] Reporting on the 10 largest files or 10 top scores - (2006-08-20)
  [975] Answering ALL the delegate's Perl questions - (2006-12-09)
  [1225] Perl - functions for directory handling - (2007-06-09)
  [1709] There is more that one way - Perl - (2008-07-14)
  [1861] Reactive (dynamic) formatting in Perl - (2008-10-31)
  [2876] Different perl examples - some corners I rarely explore - (2010-07-18)
  [3412] Handling binary data in Perl is easy! - (2011-08-30)
  [3429] Searching through all the files in or below a directory - Ruby, Tcl, Perl - (2011-09-09)

P215 - Perl - More about Files
  [2405] But I am reading from a file - no need to prompt (Perl) - (2009-09-14)
  [2964] An introduction to file handling in programs - buffering, standard in and out, and file handles - (2010-09-21)
  [3320] Reading the nth line from a file (Perl and Tcl examples) - (2011-06-09)
  [3839] Spraying data from one incoming to series of outgoing files in Perl - (2012-08-15)

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Next in the sequence - courses next year (2009)
23:30 bookings and midnight checkins
Seend, near Melksham, Wiltshire
Web Bloopers - good form design - avoiding pitfalls
Processing all files in a directory - Perl
Text formating for HTML, with PHP
Caen Hill and Olivers Castle
Dont bother to write a Perl program
Perl - map to process every member of a list (array)
What a shock