Perl exists file

You might want a variant of exists This unary operator takes one argument, either a filename, a filehandle, or a dirhandle, and tests the associated file to see if something is true about it. Despite the funny names, precedence is the same as any other named unary operator. Why not link to the official documentation for these operators instead? Ether, just because I was searching for the existence operator and its the first page I found.

PerlDoc was probably a better option in retrospect. Klaus Byskov Pedersen Klaus Byskov Pedersen k 27 27 gold badges silver badges bronze badges. You might also use -f to test for a normal file as opposed to a directory or various other special types of file — justintime. Zain Rizvi Zain Rizvi Peter Mortensen Balaji Boggaram Ramanarayan Balaji Boggaram Ramanarayan 6, 4 4 gold badges 34 34 silver badges 42 42 bronze badges.

Use the below code. Nikhil Ranjan Nikhil Ranjan 11 11 bronze badges. Sign up or log in Sign up using Google. Sign up using Facebook. Sign up using Email and Password. Post as a guest Name. Email Required, but never shown. The Overflow Blog. Stack Gives Back Safety in numbers: crowdsourcing data on nefarious IP addresses. Featured on Meta. Note that a subroutine that does not exist may still be callable: its package may have an AUTOLOAD method that makes it spring into existence the first time that it is called; see perlsub.

Note that the EXPR can be arbitrarily complicated as long as the final operation is a hash or array key lookup or subroutine name:. Although the most deeply nested array or hash element will not spring into existence just because its existence was tested, any intervening ones will. This happens anywhere the arrow operator is used, including even here:. This information could be useful to you when you are working on a script that needs access to a specific file, and you want to be sure that the file is there before performing operations.

If, for example, your script has a log or a configuration file that it depends upon, check for it first. The example script below throws a descriptive error if a file is not found using this test. First, you create a string that contains the path to the file that you want to test.

Then you wrap the -e exists statement in a conditional block so that the print statement or whatever you put there is only called if the file exists.

You could test for the opposite—that the file does not exist—by using the unless conditional:. Some other Perl file test operators are:. Using a file test can help you avoid errors or make you aware of an error that needs to be fixed. Actively scan device characteristics for identification.

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