IO::Dir(3perl) Perl Programmers Reference Guide IO::Dir(3perl)
NAME
IO::Dir - supply object methods for directory handles
SYNOPSIS
use IO::Dir;
my $d = IO::Dir->new(".");
if (defined $d) {
while (defined($_ = $d->read)) { something($_); }
$d->rewind;
while (defined($_ = $d->read)) { something_else($_); }
undef $d;
}
tie my %dir, 'IO::Dir', ".";
foreach (keys %dir) {
print $_, " " , $dir{$_}->size,"\n";
}
DESCRIPTION
The "IO::Dir" package provides two interfaces to perl's directory
reading routines.
The first interface is an object approach. "IO::Dir" provides an object
constructor and methods, which are just wrappers around perl's built in
directory reading routines.
new ( [ DIRNAME ] )
"new" is the constructor for "IO::Dir" objects. It accepts one
optional argument which, if given, "new" will pass to "open"
The following methods are wrappers for the directory related functions
built into perl (the trailing 'dir' has been removed from the names).
See perlfunc for details of these functions.
open ( DIRNAME )
read ()
seek ( POS )
tell ()
rewind ()
close ()
"IO::Dir" also provides an interface to reading directories via a tied
hash. The tied hash extends the interface beyond just the directory
reading routines by the use of "lstat", from the "File::stat" package,
"unlink", "rmdir" and "utime".
tie %hash, 'IO::Dir', DIRNAME [, OPTIONS ]
The keys of the hash will be the names of the entries in the directory.
Reading a value from the hash will be the result of calling
"File::stat::lstat". Deleting an element from the hash will delete the
corresponding file or subdirectory, provided that "DIR_UNLINK" is
included in the "OPTIONS".
Assigning to an entry in the hash will cause the time stamps of the file
to be modified. If the file does not exist then it will be created.
Assigning a single integer to a hash element will cause both the access
and modification times to be changed to that value. Alternatively a
reference to an array of two values can be passed. The first array
element will be used to set the access time and the second element will
be used to set the modification time.
SEE ALSO
File::stat
AUTHOR
Graham Barr. Currently maintained by the Perl Porters. Please report
all bugs at <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues>.
COPYRIGHT
Copyright (c) 1997-2003 Graham Barr <gbarr@pobox.com>. All rights
reserved. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.
perl v5.40.1 2026-08-30 IO::Dir(3perl)
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