I would like to tailor a perl script to my needs, for which I should only accomplish a very simple task:
I have a filename, stored in a variable, as follows:
$filename = "/path/to/file"
I would like to do a clean-up and delete that file, and also the directory in which it is located (/path/to).
I know how to delete the file:
unlink $filename
But how to delete the directory in which it was located?
First I should determine the directory name. I only have some knowledge in basic languages: there I would search the character position of the first occurence of "/" in the filename from the right, then use left$.
But how to do that in perl?
I have read the perlre and perlop man pages two times, but I still do not have the foggiest idea how to do this.
Please help me!

Hi.

Do you mean something like this:

#!/usr/bin/perl

# Set the $path and the $filename value right

$path = '/home/user/tmpdir/';
$filename = 'tmp.txt';


system ("rm $filename;rm -r $path");



or like this :


#!/usr/bin/perl

# Set the $path and the $filename value right

$path = '/home/user/tmpdir/';

system ("rm -r $path");

Yes, but first I should somehow determine the path, since it changes and it is not stored in a variable.
I suppose I could use a perl regular expression to cut the path out of the full filename. But how?

$path =~ s/\/.*$//;
# $path now is /path/to (might wanna tack on the last /)

there's probably better ways, but that should work.

Did you try the '$path =~ s/\/.*$//;' ??

It removes the hole path .....

Give me a minute and I will try to fix it.....

Okej, here we go, is this what you are searching for J_Szucs ??

#!/usr/bin/perl

$path = "/home/xxxx/tmp/test.txt";

print"\nPath to file : $path\n";

$path =~ s/\/(([^ ]|\n)*)\///g;

print "\nFilename : $path\n\n";



It will give you :



Path to file : /home/xxxx/tmp/test.txt

Filename : test.txt

Of course not - I just said the first thing that poped into my head and assumed it was correct.

By the way, FredrikN, it was good that you got the filename, but I think the path is what J_Szucs is looking for.

Ahh, okej, misstake by me , I thought it was file.

Will take a look at the path....

So the problem is the path /home/xxxx/xxx/

I think my og expression dosen't work because of "greedy matching". I don't recall how to specify to do it only once. Maybe somebody can modify that?

Long route (by using FredrickN's filename )

Thanks to your help FredrikN and lackluster, now it works.
But what is your opinion, will that
system ("rm -r $path");
work on FreeBSD, too?
You know, I had some trouble nowadays when changing platforms...

I've never used FreeBSD, but I imagine it wouldn't be a problem.