On Fri, 29 Jul 2005 12:05:09 -0700, you wrote:
>I know how to and can successfully open a directory , but i need to choose
>a file within the directory at random to verify the data on. does anyone
>have any suggestions of how to do this? i'm thinking it could take a while
>to create an array of the file names and then randomly pick a slot there,
>but that;s all i can think of right now.
If you want a truly random selection, you obviously need to read the
entire directory, but you don't have to save every entry. I would do
something like this:
my $file_count = 0; # count of eligible files
my $random_file; # name of chosen file
opendir DIRHANDLE, $dirname or die "OOPS! $!";
while (my $filename = readdir(DIRHANDLE)) {
# Assuming subdirectories are ignored. Other criteria
# can be added here.
next if -d "$dirname/$filename";
$random_file = "$dirname/$filename" if rand < 1/(++$file_count);
}
--
Eric Amick
Columbia, MD
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