Chapter 9.2 Reading the contents of a directory

Once you've opened a directory, you can see which files it contains.

To see what's in a directory:

1. Open the directory as described in Chapter 9.1
2. Type @ARRAY, where ARRAY is the name of the array that will contain each of all the files (and directories) from the open directory.
   
   Or type $scalar, where scalar is the variable that will contain only the next single item in the directory.
   
   
3. Type =.
4. Type readdir(LABEL), where LABEL corresponds to the label you gave the opened directory (See step 1 on Chapter 9.1)
5. Type ; to complete the line.

opendir(LOGDIR, ".") || @ErrorMessage; @files = readdir (LOGDIR); closedir(LOGDIR); if (@files) { print "You can choose from the following logs:"; foreach $filename (@files) { print $filename unless ($filename =~ /^\.+$/); } }

Tips

• It's a good idea to close the directory after reading it's contents (See Chapter 9.3).
• Each time you use $scalar=readdir(LABEL);, you will get the next filename contained in the open directory.