How to read binary file in Perl

Question

I'm having an issue with writing a Perl script to read a binary file.

My code is as the following whereby the $file are files in binary format. I tried to search through the web and apply in my code, tried to print it out, but it seems it doesn't work well.

Currently it only prints the '&&&&&&&&&&&" and ""ppppppppppp", but what I really want is it can print out each of the $line, so that I can do some other post processing later. Also, I'm not quite sure what the $data is as I see it is part of the code from sample in article, stating suppose to be a scalar. I need somebody who can pin point me where the error goes wrong in my code. Below is what I did.

my $tmp = "$basedir/$key";
opendir (TEMP1, "$tmp");
my @dirs = readdir(TEMP1);
closedir(TEMP1);

foreach my $dirs (@dirs) {
    next if ($dirs eq "." || $dirs eq "..");
    print "---->$dirs\n";
    my $d = "$basedir/$key/$dirs";
    if (-d "$d") {
        opendir (TEMP2, $d) || die $!;
        my @files = readdir (TEMP2); # This should read binary files
        closedir (TEMP2);

        #my $buffer = "";
        #opendir (FILE, $d) || die $!;
        #binmode (FILE);
        #my @files =  readdir (FILE, $buffer, 169108570);
        #closedir (FILE);

        foreach my $file (@files) {
            next if ($file eq "." || $file eq "..");
            my $f = "$d/$file";
            print "==>$file\n";
            open FILE, $file || die $!;
            binmode FILE;
            foreach ($line = read (FILE, $data, 169108570)) {
                print "&&&&&&&&&&&$line\n";
                print "ppppppppppp$data\n";
            }
            close FILE;
        }
    }
}

I have altered my code so that it goes like as below. Now I can read the $data. Thanks J-16 SDiZ for pointing out that. I'm trying to push the info I got from the binary file to an array called "@array", thinkking to grep data from the array for string whichever match "p04" but fail. Can someone point out where is the error?

my $tmp = "$basedir/$key";
opendir (TEMP1, "$tmp");
my @dirs = readdir (TEMP1);
closedir (TEMP1);

foreach my $dirs (@dirs) {
    next if ($dirs eq "." || $dirs eq "..");
    print "---->$dirs\n";
    my $d = "$basedir/$key/$dirs";
    if (-d "$d") {
        opendir (TEMP2, $d) || die $!;
        my @files = readdir (TEMP2); #This should read binary files
        closedir (TEMP2);

        foreach my $file (@files) {
            next if ($file eq "." || $file eq "..");
            my $f = "$d/$file";
            print "==>$file\n";
            open FILE, $file || die $!;
            binmode FILE;
            foreach ($line = read (FILE, $data, 169108570)) {
                print "&&&&&&&&&&&$line\n";
                print "ppppppppppp$data\n";
                push @array, $data;
            }
            close FILE;
        }
    }
}

foreach $item (@array) {
    #print "==>$item<==\n"; # It prints out content of binary file without the ==> and <== if I uncomment this.. weird!
    if ($item =~ /p04(.*)/) {
        print "=>$item<===============\n"; # It prints "=><===============" according to the number of binary file I have.  This is wrong that I aspect it to print the content of each binary file instead :(
        next if ($item !~ /^w+/);
        open (LOG, ">log") or die $!;
        #print LOG $item;
        close LOG;
    }
}

Again, I changed my code as following, but it still doesn't work as it do not able to grep the "p04" correctly by checking on the "log" file. It did grep the whole file including binary like this "@^@^@^@^G^D^@^@^@^^@p04bbhi06^@^^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@hh^R^@^@^@^^@^@^@p04lohhj09^@^@^@^^@@" . What I'm aspecting is it do grep the anything with p04 only such as grepping p04bbhi06 and p04lohhj09. Here is how my code goes:-

foreach my $file (@files) {
    next if ($file eq "." || $file eq "..");
    my $f = "$d/$file";
    print "==>$file\n";
    open FILE, $f || die $!;
    binmode FILE;
    my @lines = <FILE>;
    close FILE;
    foreach $cell (@lines) {
        if ($cell =~ /b12/) {
            push @array, $cell;
        }
    }
}

#my @matches = grep /p04/, @lines;
#foreach $item (@matches) {
foreach $item (@array) {
    #print "-->$item<--";
    open (LOG, ">log") or die $!;
    print LOG $item;
    close LOG;
}

Answer 1

Use:

$line = read (FILE, $data, 169108570);

The data is in $data; and $line is the number of bytes read.

       my $f = "$d/$file" ;
       print "==>$file\n" ;
       open FILE, $file || die $! ;

I guess the full path is in $f, but you are opening $file. (In my testing -- even $f is not the full path, but I guess you may have some other glue code...)

If you just want to walk all the files in a directory, try File::DirWalk or File::Find.

Answer 2

I am not sure if I understood you right.

If you need to read a binary file, you can do the same as for a text file:

open F, "/bin/bash";
my $file = do { local $/; <F> };
close F;

Under Windows you may need to add binmode F; under *nix it works without it.

If you need to find which lines in an array contains some word, you can use grep function:

my @matches = grep /something/, @array_to_grep;

You will get all matched lines in the new array @matches.

BTW: I don't think it's a good idea to read tons of binary files into memory at once. You can search them 1 by 1...

If you need to find where the match occurs you can use another standard function, index:

my $offset = index('myword', $file);