package File::Find::Wanted; =head1 NAME File::Find::Wanted - More obvious wrapper around File::Find =head1 VERSION Version 0.01 $Header: /home/cvs/file-find-wanted/Wanted.pm,v 1.4 2004/08/06 04:39:43 andy Exp $ =cut our $VERSION = "0.01"; use strict; use File::Find; our @ISA = qw( Exporter ); our @EXPORT = qw( find_wanted ); =head1 SYNOPSIS File::Find is a great module, except that it doesn't actually find anything. Its C function walks a directory tree and calls a callback function. Unfortunately, the callback function is deceptively called C, which implies that it should return a boolean saying whether you want the file. That's not how it works. Most of the time you call C, you just want to build a list of files. There are other modules that do this for you, most notably Richard Clamp's great L, but in many cases, it's overkill, and you need to learn a new syntax. With the C function, you supply a callback sub and a list of starting directories, but the sub actually should return a boolean saying whether you want the file in your list or not. To get a list of all files ending in F<.jpg>: my @files = find_wanted( sub { -f && /\.jpg$/ }, $dir ); For a list of all directories that are not F or F<.svn>: my @files = find_wanted( sub { -d && !/^(CVS|\.svn)$/ }, $dir ) ); It's easy, direct, and simple. =head1 WHY DO THIS? The cynical may say "that's just the same as doing this": my @files; find( sub { push @files, $File::Find::name if -f && /\.jpg$/ }, $dir ); Sure it is, but File::Find::Wanted makes it more obvious, and saves a line of code. That's worth it to me. I'd like it if find_wanted() made its way into the File::Find distro, but for now, this will do. =head1 FUNCTIONS =head2 find_wanted( I<&wanted>, I<@directories> ) Descends through I<@directories>, calling the I function as it finds each file. The function returns a list of all the files and directories for which the I function returned a true value. This is just a wrapper around C. See L for details on how to modify its behavior. =cut sub find_wanted { my $func = shift; my @files; local $_; find( sub { push @files, $File::Find::name if &$func }, @_ ); return @files; } 1;