File test or -X operators
Before we try to read from a file or try to write to a file
we might want to check our rights, if we can do the required action at all.
For this there is a bunch of so called -X operators. Usually you use them in
an if statement:
if (-e "file.txt") {
print "File exists !\n";
}
- -e File (or directory) exists
- -r File (or directory) is readable by this user
- -w File (or directory) is writable by this user
- -x File (or directory) is executable by this user
- -f Entry is a file
- -d Entry is a directory
- -l Entry is a symbolic link
- -s Size of the file (hence also means 'file is not empty')
- -M Number of days between the modification date of a file and the start time of our script
Hence -s can be used either in an if statement or like this:
$size = -s $filename;
There are more such operators see `perldoc -f -x`