In Perl, how can filter all log files in a directory, and extract interesting lines? - perl

Question

I'm trying to select only the .log files in my directory and then search in those files for the word "unbound" and print the entire line into a new output file with the same name as the log file (number###.log) but with a .txt extension. This is what I have so far:
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
my $path = $ARGV[0];
my $outpath = $ARGV[1];
my #files;
my $files;
opendir(DIR,$path) or die "$!";
#files = grep { /\.log$/} readdir(DIR);
my #out;
my $out;
opendir(OUT,$outpath) or die "$!";
my $line;
foreach $files (#files) {
open (FILE, "$files");
my #line = <FILE>;
my $regex = Unbound;
open (OUT, ">>$out");
print grep {$line =~ /$regex/ } <>;
}
close OUT;
close FILE;
closedir(DIR);
closedir (OUT);
I'm a beginner, and I don't really know how to create a new text file with the acquired output.

Answer 1

Few things I'd suggest to improve this code:
declare your loop iterators within the loop. foreach my $file ( #files ) {
use 3 arg open: open ( my $input_fh, "<", $filename );
use glob rather than opendir then grep. foreach my $file ( <$path/*.txt> ) {
grep is good for extracting things into arrays. Your grep reads the whole file to print it, which isn't necessary. Doesn't matter much if the file is short though.
perltidy is great for reformatting code.
you're opening 'OUT' to a directory path (I think?) which isn't going to work.
$outpath isn't, it's a file. You need to do something different to output to different files. opendir isn't really valid to an output.
because you're using opendir that's actually giving you filenames - not full paths. So you might be in the wrong place to actually open the files. Prepending the path name, doing a chdir are possible solutions. But that's one of the reasons I like glob because it returns a path as well.
So with that in mind - how about:
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use File::Basename;
#Extract paths
my $input_path = $ARGV[0];
my $output_path = $ARGV[1];
#Error if paths are invalid.
unless (defined $input_path
and -d $input_path
and defined $output_path
and -d $output_path )
{
die "Usage: $0 <input_path> <output_path>\n";
}
foreach my $filename (<$input_path/*.log>) {
# extract the 'name' bit of the filename.
# be slightly careful with this - it's based
# on an assumption which isn't always true.
# File::Spec is a more powerful way of accomplishing this.
# but should grab 'number####' from /path/to/file/number####.log
my $output_file = basename ( $filename, '.log' );
#open input and output filehandles.
open( my $input_fh, "<", $filename ) or die $!;
open( my $output_fh, ">", "$output_path/$output_file.txt" ) or die $!;
print "Processing $filename -> $output_path/$output_file.txt\n";
#iterate input, extracting into $line
while ( my $line = <$input_fh> ) {
#check if $line matches your RE.
if ( $line =~ m/Unbound/ ) {
#write it to output.
print {$output_fh} $line;
}
}
#tidy up our filehandles. Although technically, they'll
#close automatically because they leave scope
close($output_fh);
close($input_fh);
}

Answer 2

Here is a script that takes advantage of Path::Tiny. Now, at this stage of your learning process, you are probably better off understanding #Sobrique's solution, but using modules such as Path::Tiny or Path::Class will make it easier to write these one off scripts more quickly, and correctly.
Also, I didn't really test this script, so watch out for bugs.
#!/usr/bin/env perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use Path::Tiny;
run(\#ARGV);
sub run {
my $argv = shift;
unless (#$argv == 2) {
die "Need source and destination paths\n";
}
my $it = path($argv->[0])->realpath->iterator({
recurse => 0,
follow_symlinks => 0,
});
my $outdir = path($argv->[1])->realpath;
while (my $path = $it->()) {
next unless -f $path;
next unless $path =~ /[.]log\z/;
my $logfh = $path->openr;
my $outfile = $outdir->child($path->basename('.log') . '.txt');
my $outfh;
while (my $line = <$logfh>) {
next unless $line =~ /Unbound/;
unless ($outfh) {
$outfh = $outfile->openw;
}
print $outfh $line;
}
close $outfh
or die "Cannot close output '$outfile': $!";
}
}
Notes
realpath will croak if the path provided does not exist.
Similarly for openr and openw.
I am reading input files line-by-line to keep the memory footprint of the program independent of the sizes of input files.
I do not open the output file until I know I have a match to print to.
When matching a file extension using a regular expression pattern, keep in mind that \n is a valid character in Unix file names, and the $ anchor will match it.