Perl: copy a file from one place to another

Question

This is just a small script. I run to a continuous loop to check the directory and move every file that is there. This code works, and I run it in the background processes. But for some reason I get the following error: '/home/srvc_ibdcoe_pcdev/Niall_Test/new_dir/..' and '/home/srvc_ibdcoe_pcdev/Niall_Test/perl_files/..' are identical (not copied) at move2.pl line 27

any idea why she tells me that she is identical, although the paths are different?

Thank you very much

script below

 #!/usr/bin/perl use diagnostics; use strict; use warnings; use File::Copy; my $poll_cycle = 10; my $dest_dir = "/home/srvc_ibdcoe_pcdev/Niall_Test/perl_files"; while (1) { sleep $poll_cycle; my $dirname = '/home/srvc_ibdcoe_pcdev/Niall_Test/new_dir'; opendir my $dh, $dirname or die "Can't open directory '$dirname' for reading: $!"; my @files = readdir $dh; closedir $dh; if ( grep( !/^[.][.]?$/, @files ) > 0 ) { print "Dir is not empty\n"; foreach my $target (@files) { # Move file move("$dirname/$target", "$dest_dir/$target"); } } } 

Answer 1

You need to filter out special entries .. and . from @files .

 #!/usr/bin/perl use diagnostics; use strict; use warnings; use File::Copy; my $poll_cycle = 10; my $dest_dir = "/home/srvc_ibdcoe_pcdev/Niall_Test/perl_files"; while (1) { sleep $poll_cycle; my $dirname = '/home/srvc_ibdcoe_pcdev/Niall_Test/new_dir'; opendir my $dh, $dirname or die "Can't open directory '$dirname' for reading: $!"; my @files = grep !/^[.][.]?$/, readdir $dh; closedir $dh; if (@files) { print "Dir is not empty\n"; foreach my $target (@files) { # Move file move("$dirname/$target", "$dest_dir/$target"); } } } 

The message you see is correct. Both paths resolve the same directory due to .. ; both allow /home/srvc_ibdcoe_pcdev/Niall_Test

.. refers to the parent directory of the directory.