[azonic]

I'm taking an introductory course into computer programming and I needed to write a Perl program for renaming files in a specified directory according to regular expression search and replace patterns given on the command line.

Has to support 4 optional command line flags -f, -u, -d, and -q to modify it's behavior. I made an error somewhere along the way, and I need someone to help me since I'm not a programmer at all

Here's the code, if anyone could fix it or write it in a different way of performing the task I'd greatly appreciate it. If not that's ok . Here's what I wrote...

Code:

@args = ();
$forceFlag = 0;   # -f
$upcaseFlag = 0;  # -u
$lowcaseFlag = 0; # -d
$quietFlag = 0;   # -q

$error = 0;
# iterate through the arguments
foreach $arg ( @ARGV )
{
	$first = substr($arg, 0, 1);
	if ($first eq "-")
	{
		# we've found one or more switches
		foreach $letter ( split('',$arg) )
		{
			if ( $letter eq '-' )
			{ 
				# do nothing 
			}
			elsif ( $letter eq 'f' )
			{
				$forceFlag = 1;
			}
			elsif ( $letter eq 'u' )
			{
				$lowcaseFlag = 0;
				$upcaseFlag = 1;
			}
			elsif ( $letter eq 'd' )
			{
				$upcaseFlag = 0;
				$lowcaseFlag = 1;
			}
			elsif ( $letter eq 'q' )
			{
				$quietFlag = 1;
			}
			else
			{
				print "Invalid switch -$letter\n";
				$error = 1;
			}
		}
	}
	else
	{
		# we've found an argument
		push(@args, $arg)
	}
}
if ( $error )
{
	exit(1);
}

$numArgs = $#args + 1;

if ( $numArgs < 1 )
{
	print "Error: no directory specified.";
	exit(1);
}
else
{
	$searchDir = $args[0];
}

if ( $numArgs < 2 )
{
	print "Error: no search pattern specified.\n";
	exit(1);
}
else
{
	$searchPattern = $args[1];
}

if ( $numArgs == 3 )
{
	$replacePattern = $args[2];
}

$totalfiles = 0;
$validfiles = 0;

opendir(D, $searchDir);
@files = readdir(D);
closedir(D);
foreach $file (@files)
{
	my $filename = $file;
	my $originalName = $filename;
    if ($file eq '.' || $file eq '..' || -d $file) 
    {    } 
    else 
    {
		 if ( $filename =~ /$searchPattern/ )
		 {
			 $totalfiles++;
			 if ( $upcaseFlag )
			 {
				 $filename = uc($filename);
			 }
			 if ( $lowcaseFlag )
			 {
				 $filename = lc($filename);
			 }
		 }
		 my $resultName;
		 if ( $replacePattern )
		 {
		 	$resultName = renameFile($searchPattern, $replacePattern, $filename);	   
	 	 }
	 	 else
	 	 {
		 	 $resultName = $filename;
	 	 }
		 if ( $resultName ne $originalName )
		 {
			 $validfiles++;
			 if ( $forceFlag )
			 {
				 rename($searchDir . '/' . $originalName, $searchDir . '/' . $resultName);
			 }
	 		 if ( !$quietFlag )
			 {
			 	 print $searchDir . '/' . $originalName . " -> " . $searchDir . '/' . $resultName . "\n";
		 	 }	
		 }
	 }
}

if ( $forceFlag )
{
	print "$validfiles file(s) were renamed out of $totalfiles file(s) that matched the search pattern.\n";
}
else
{
	print "$validfiles file(s) could be renamed out of $totalfiles file(s) that matched the search pattern.\n";
}


sub renameFile
{
	my $searchPattern = shift;
	my $replacePattern = shift;
	my $filename = shift;
	$filename =~ s/$searchPattern/$replacePattern/g;
	return $filename;
}

[nakulgoyal]

Welcome to PT !!

[Chas]

Originally Posted by azonic

I made an error somewhere along the way, and I need someone to help me since I'm not a programmer at all

What's wrong with it? Details on the problem(s) will give me an idea of where to start looking.

~Charlie

p.s. Very nice code for not being a programmer!