how to combine directory path in perl

Question

I am having a perl script in which i am giving path to directory as input. Directory has xml files inside it.

In my code i am iterating through all the xml files and creating absolute path for all xml files. Code is working fine.

#!/usr/bin/perl

use File::Spec;

$num_args = $#ARGV + 1;
if ($num_args != 1) {
   print "\nUsage: $0 <input directory>\n";
   exit;
}

my $dirPath = $ARGV[0];

opendir(DIR, $dirPath);
my @docs = grep(/\.xml$/,readdir(DIR));

foreach my $file (@docs) 
{
   my $abs_path = join("",$dir,$file);

   print "absolute path is $abs_path";
}

Question i have here is, joining $dirPath and $file with no separator which means that $dirPath must end in a "/". So is there any way or built in function in perl which take cares of this condition and replaces the join method.

All i want is not to worry about the separator "/". Even if script is called with path as "/test/dir_to_process" or "/test/dir_to_process/", i should be able to produce the correct absolute path to all xml files present without worrying about the separator.

Let me know if anyone has any suggestions.

Answer 1

Please take heed of the advice you are given. It is ridiculous to keep asking questions when comments and answers to previous posts are being ignored.

You must always use strict and use warnings at the top of every Perl program you write, and declare every variable using my. It isn't hard to do, and you will be reprimanded if you post code that doesn't have these measures in place.

You use the File::Spec module in your program but never make use of it. It is often easier to use File::Spec::Functions instead, which exports the methods provided by File::Spec so that there is no need to use the object-oriented call style.

catfile will correctly join a file (or directory) name to a path, doing the right thing if path separators are incorrect. This rewrite of your program works fine.

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

use File::Spec::Functions 'catfile';

if (@ARGV != 1) {
   print "\nUsage: $0 <input directory>\n";
   exit;
}

my ($dir_path) = @ARGV;
my $xml_pattern = catfile($dir_path, '*.xml');

while ( my $xml_file = glob($xml_pattern) ) {
   print "Absolute path is $xml_file\n";
}

Answer 2

The answer is in the documentation for File::Spec, e.g., catfile:

 $path = File::Spec->catfile( @directories, $filename );

or catpath:

 $full_path = File::Spec->catpath( $volume, $directory, $file );