Learning Perl on Win32 Systems

The -x File Tests

Now you know how to open a filehandle for output, overwriting any existing file with the same name. Suppose you wanted to make sure that there wasn’t a file by that name (to keep you from accidentally blowing away your spreadsheet data or that important birthday calendar). Perl uses -e $filevar to test for the existence of the file named by the scalar value in $filevar. If this file exists, the result is true; otherwise it is false. For example:

$name = "index.html";
if (-e $name) {
    print "I see you already have a file named $name\n";
} else {
    print "Perhaps you'd like to make a file called $name\n";
}

The operand of the -e operator is really just any scalar expression that evaluates to some string, including a string literal. Here’s an example that checks to see whether both index.html and index.cgi exist in the current directory:

if (-e "index.html" && -e "index.cgi") {
    print "You have both styles of index files here.\n";
}

Other operators are defined as well. For example, -r $filevar returns true if the file named in $filevar exists and is readable. Similarly, -w $filevar tests whether it is writable. Here’s an example that tests a user-specified filename for both readability and writability:

print "where? ";
$filename = <STDIN>;
chomp $filename; # toss pesky newline
if (-r $filename && -w $filename) {
		# file exists, and I can read and write it
		...
}

Many more file tests are available, some of which are not applicable to Perl for Win32. Table 10.1 lists some file ...