NAME

File::Remove - Remove files and directories

SYNOPSIS

    use File::Remove 'remove';

    # removes (without recursion) several files
    remove( '*.c', '*.pl' );

    # removes (with recursion) several directories
    remove( \1, qw{directory1 directory2} ); 

    # removes (with recursion) several files and directories
    remove( \1, qw{file1 file2 directory1 *~} );

    # trashes (with support for undeleting later) several files
    trash( '*~' );

DESCRIPTION

File::Remove::remove removes files and directories. It acts like /bin/rm, for the most part. Although unlink can be given a list of files, it will not remove directories; this module remedies that. It also accepts wildcards, * and ?, as arguments for filenames.

File::Remove::trash accepts the same arguments as remove, with the addition of an optional, infrequently used "other platforms" hashref.

SUBROUTINES

remove

Removes files and directories. Directories are removed recursively like in rm -rf if the first argument is a reference to a scalar that evaluates to true. If the first arguemnt is a reference to a scalar then it is used as the value of the recursive flag. By default it's false so only pass \1 to it.

In list context it returns a list of files/directories removed, in scalar context it returns the number of files/directories removed. The list/number should match what was passed in if everything went well.

rm

Just calls remove. It's there for people who get tired of typing remove.

clear

The clear function is a version of remove designed for use in test scripts. It takes a list of paths that it will both initially delete during the current test run, and then further flag for deletion at END-time as a convenience for the next test run.

trash

Removes files and directories, with support for undeleting later. Accepts an optional "other platforms" hashref, passing the remaining arguments to remove.

Win32

Requires Win32::FileOp.

Installation not actually enforced on Win32 yet, since Win32::FileOp has badly failing dependencies at time of writing.

OS X

Requires Mac::Glue.

Other platforms

The first argument to trash() must be a hashref with two keys, 'rmdir' and 'unlink', each referencing a coderef. The coderefs will be called with the filenames that are to be deleted.