Perl Script to send notification email once file is copied to linux directory

The simple way is to create a mail subroutine

To call the subroutine will pass the references to the recipient, subject, and message


sub mail_notification {
          my ($recipient,$subject,$message)=shift(@_);
open MAIL "|/usr/sbin/sendmail -oi -t" || die "unable to open sendmail:$!\n";
print MAIL <<EOF
To: $$recipient
From: <your emailaddress>
Subject: $$subject

@$message

EOF
;
close(MAIL);

} #end mail_notification sub



Presumably to maintain the state of the directory I.e. The script will maintain which files were present to detect new files, you should consider using a Flat file DB, dbm, or a hash.

I would like to use a hash if possible. But after a file is copied into the directory , I would like it to be moved somewhere else. So basically this directory will always be empty. Would it be easier to monitor this directory that way ? I would like to see an example how a directory could be monitored for an coming file before the email subroutine can be triggered.

When the script is triggered
Open DIR, "ls /path/to |" || die "unable to get listing\n";
While <DIR> {

Print "$_\n";
}
Close(DIR)

I get the following error when i try to run the above code in a script.

String found where operator expected at ./listFiles.pl line 11, near "Print "$_\n""
	(Do you need to predeclare Print?)
Semicolon seems to be missing at ./listFiles.pl line 12.
syntax error at ./listFiles.pl line 9, near "DIR>"
Execution of ./listFiles.pl aborted due to compilation errors.

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the missing semicolon is on the close line.  You need to make every command lower case
open, while, print, close

Oh ok thanks Now I have:

#!/usr/bin/perl
#
use warnings;
use strict;
#


open DIR, "ls /test/files |" || die "unable to get listing\n";
while <DIR> {

print "$_\n";
}
close(DIR);

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but i still get the error:

syntax error at ./listFiles.pl line 9, near "while <DIR>"
Execution of ./listFiles.pl aborted due to compilation errors.

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I think i got it the way i want it. However, i'm not sure how to move the files i have in the $files variable?

Also, if there are no files in this directory. Will the script just stop or do i need to put something in?

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

my $dir = '/test/files';

opendir(DIR, $dir) or die $!;

while (my $file = readdir(DIR)) {

    # Use a regular expression to ignore files beginning with a period
    next if ($file =~ m/INCOMING/);
    next if ($file =~ m/OUTGOING/);
    next if ($file =~ m/^\./);

    print "$file\n";

    }

closedir(DIR);
exit 0;
~         

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