Opening and Reading a Directory in Perl

opendir(HU, ".") || print "Can't open... maybe try chmod 777";
@hu=readdir(HU);
closedir(HU);


-The period between quotations means the current directory (the directory the script is in).
-You could use a relative or root path to a directory you want to read.
-Your array @hu now contains a list of all the files in the current directory.

NOTES:
-The words HU are called a Filehandle. Always use ALL CAPS for filehandles. The HU could be pretty much anything you like except STDIN and STDOUT, which are reserved for other things.
-The || means or. We said "or print this error if you can't read the directory."


opendir(HU, "../cities");

The above line would open the directory cities provided it was one directory up from our script.


Copy and Paste Perl Code:

#!/usr/bin/perl

print "Content-type:text/html\n\n";

opendir(HU, ".");
@hu=readdir(HU);
closedir(HU);

foreach $hu(@hu) {
print "$hu<br>";
}

exit;


IN-CASE-YOU-WONDER NOTE: You might notice our script prints a period and a couple more periods. Those symbolize the directories above the one we're in.

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