File I/O

Opening a file
 Before reading or writing to a file, we need to open it first.
 This tells the operating system that we are currently accessing
the file and no one else can change it while we are working
with it.
 open() is the built-in function used to open a file.
Syntax:
open(filevariable, filename)

“file variable”
 “filevariable” is the name that we use in our Perl program to
refer the file.
 It is the first argument in open().
 To name file variables, the rules are:
1. They should begin with an alphabet.
2. Can contain a sequence of alphabets, digits and underscores.
3. It’s a convention in Perl to use file variables in upper case, in
order to differentiate them with ordinary variables.

File modes
 Represents what is the purpose of opening a file.
 3 different modes of file access are there:
1. Read mode
 2. Write mode
3. Append mode
 “read” is the default file access mode. It enables us to read file
contents, but won’t allow to write to it.
 “write” mode allows us to write some contents to a file. If the
file is already existing, the contents are over written.
 “append” mode appends the data to a file. The already existing
contents are safe.
 If a file is opened in read mode, and if doesn’t exists, it leads to
an error.
 If a file is opened in write mode, if it doesn’t exists, it will be
created new.
Ex:
open(MYFILE, ”emp.txt”);
open(MYFILE, “>emp.txt”);
open(MYFILE, “>>emp.txt”);

To check whether open() was successful or not:

 open() returns a value indicating whether the file was
successfully opened or not.
 Returns zero, if unsuccessful and a non-zero value if successful.
 So, to check whether open() is successful or not,
if(open(MYFILE, “emp.txt”))
{
----
---
}
Closing a file
 After performing transactions on a file, we must close it.
Syntax:
close(Filevariable);
 Perl automatically closes a file, when the program terminates.
 When we open another file with the same file variable, the file
will be closed automatically.
Ex:
close(MYFILE);
Reading from a file
 To read from a file, we use the file variable in < > operator.
Ex:
open(MYFILE, “emp.txt”);
$line=<MYFILE>;

die()
 When die() is used, program terminates immediately and prints
the message passed to die().
Ex:
die(“stop this now\n”);
Writing data to a file
 Writing can be done after opening a file in ‘write’ or ‘append’
mode.
 print() can be used to write data to a file.
Ex:
open(MYFILE, “>emp.txt”);
print MYFILE “This is line1\n”;
print MYFILE “this is line2\n”;
Ex: copy a file, merge two files

Determining the status of a file

We have a number of file test operators as:

 -b: the file is a block special device file
 -c: the file is a character special device file
 -r: file is readable.
 -w: file is writable
  -x: file is executable
 -d: file is a directory
 -e: file exists or not
 -f: file is a regular file
 -l: file is a symbolic link
 -s: file is a nonempty file.
 -z: file is empty
 -T : file is a text file.
Ex:
-f emp.txt
Or
-f MYFILE

Directory manipulation functions

mkdir()
 Creates a new directory in the specified path
mkdir(dirname)

chdir()
 Sets a directory to be the current working directory.
chdir(dirname);
opendir()
 Opens a directory i.e. allows us to examine the list of files and
subdirectories
opendir(dir_variable, dir name);
 ‘dir_variable’ is the variable name used by the program to
represent the directory.
 ‘dir name’ is the name of the directory.
Ex:
opendir(DIR1, “/home/murali/dir1”)

closedir()
 Closes the specified directory.
closedir(dirvar);
Ex:
closedir(DIR1);

readdir()
 Once a directory is opened, we can read every file and
subdirectory present in it.
readdir(dirvar);
Ex:
file=readdir(DIR1);
Or
print readdir(DIR1);
Reading directory contents into an array
@arr=readdir(D1);