DirHandle

Section: Perl Programmers Reference Guide (3pm)
Updated: 2007-12-18
Index Return to Main Contents

NAME

DirHandle - supply object methods for directory handles

SYNOPSIS

    use DirHandle;
    $d = new DirHandle ".";
    if (defined $d) {
        while (defined($_ = $d->read)) { something($_); }
        $d->rewind;
        while (defined($_ = $d->read)) { something_else($_); }
        undef $d;
    }

DESCRIPTION

The "DirHandle" method provide an alternative interface to the opendir(), closedir(), readdir(), and rewinddir() functions.

The only objective benefit to using "DirHandle" is that it avoids namespace pollution by creating globs to hold directory handles.

NOTES

*: On Mac OS (Classic), the path separator is ':', not '/', and the current directory is denoted as ':', not '.'. You should be careful about specifying relative pathnames. While a full path always begins with a volume name, a relative pathname should always begin with a ':'. If specifying a volume name only, a trailing ':' is required.