Unzipping a file from a perl script . . . 1

[youthman]

Good day to all!

I am a VERY new perl programmer and I have run into an interesting problem.

I am receiving a series of files by FTP each day. The first set is a flat-file database that is overwritten each day. The second is a zip file containing a series of images for the day saved by the date. (Today's date is April 28, 2004 and so the file is: 04282004.zip)

I need to be able to automatically unzip this file to a specific directory each day after it arrives. (All the images will go into the same /pics/ directory.

I have tried to look at the information on cpan but being new, it is VERY confusing! ANY HELP?!?!?!?!

youthman

 

[Nebbish]

Youth,

The Perl function "system" calls stuff as though you were at a command prompt. Check out the winzip documentation for shell usage, but I imagine your solution would look something like this:

system(winzip someFolder/myzipfile.zip /extractionFolder);

Good luck,

Nick

 

[youthman]

I have tried this and it doesn't seem to work in any fashion! I am running this script remotely on a hosting server. It is not a physical box that I have control over, so, I am somewhat limited. It is also a Unix based system. I don't think it has "winzip" on it, but I tried to use pkzip, and that was also unsuccessful. Anyone else got ideas?!?!?!?!

 

[MikeLacey]

Have a look at this:

http://cpan.uwinnipeg.ca/module/Archive::Zip

Seems to do what you want.

Mike

"Deliver me from the bane of civilised life; teddy bear envy."

Want to get great answers to your Tek-Tips questions? Have a look at faq219-2884

 

[youthman]

That is great, now on to the next problem with that . . . is there a way to install this on a remote server that does not give me shell access? I am placing this on a hosting acount that I do not have telnet into. All I can do is FTP.

 

[toolkit]

If you're on UNIX, and you don't want to download Archive::Zip, then try something like:

$zipfile = "a.zip";
open (ZIPFILES, "unzip $zipfile|");
while (<ZIPFILES>) {
    ## do something with the file that has been unzipped
}
close ZIPFILES;

Cheers, Neil

 

[MikeLacey]

Yes, you can put it into your shell script's current directory in a directory called Archive - it should get picked up by your script from there.

Mike

"Deliver me from the bane of civilised life; teddy bear envy."

Want to get great answers to your Tek-Tips questions? Have a look at faq219-2884

 

[youthman]

Thank you toolkit! You are a LIFESAVER!!! One last thing . . . Is there a way to set the directory that the files get written to, and to set the preferences for overwrite?

 

[toolkit]

The usage for my version of unzip says:
[quoute]
UnZip 5.32 of 3 November 1997, by Info-ZIP. Maintained by Greg Roelofs. Send
bug reports to the authors at Zip-Bugs@lists.wku.edu; see README for details.

Usage: unzip [-Z] [-opts[modifiers]] file[.zip]

• [-x xlist] [-d exdir]
  Default action is to extract files in list, except those in xlist, to exdir;
  file[.zip] may be a wildcard. -Z => ZipInfo mode ("unzip -Z" for usage).
  
  -p extract files to pipe, no messages -l list files (short format)
  -f freshen existing files, create none -t test compressed archive data
  -u update files, create if necessary -z display archive comment
  -x exclude files that follow (in xlist) -d extract files into exdir
  
  modifiers: -q quiet mode (-qq => quieter)
  -n never overwrite existing files -a auto-convert any text files
  -o overwrite files WITHOUT prompting -aa treat ALL files as text
  -j junk paths (do not make directories) -v be verbose/print version info
  -C match filenames case-insensitively -L make (some) names lowercase
  -X restore UID/GID info -V retain VMS version numbers
  -M pipe through "more" pager
  Examples (see unzip.doc for more info):
  unzip data1 -x joe => extract all files except joe from zipfile data1.zip
  unzip -p foo | more => send contents of foo.zip via pipe into program more
  unzip -fo foo ReadMe => quietly replace existing ReadMe if archive file newer
  [/quote]
  So it looks like the -d and other options will help you out. Note that if you just want to unzip the file, you can use system("unzip -d $somedir $somefile"), similar to Nebbish's suggestion.

 

[toolkit]

Ug. If only I could spell quote ;-)

 

[youthman]

Thank you to ALL!!!! A combination of all your information and it is working great now!!! THANK YOU!!!

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