Perl: Looping through directories and getting a directory that doesn't exist?

Question

So I've created a very simple Perl script to loop through everything on the C: drive and searching for things with a specific name. Now, It's giving me this error:

Can't open directory C:\ProgramData\Application Data: Invalid argument at C:\Use  
rs\Alexander\Desktop\Coding\Perl\tree.pl line 41  
Press any key to continue . . .  

Now, C:\ProgramData is a nonexistent file. (resolved) So, my question is, why is this file being opened? Here is my code:

my $dir = dir("C:\\");
my $c = 0;
recurse($dir);
sub recurse {
    my $v = 0;
    while(my $file = $_[0]->next) {
        $v++;
        next if $v < 3;
        if($file->stringify eq "Program Files") {
            print $file->stringify;
            $c++;
        }
        recurse($file) if $file->is_dir();
    }
}
print "Total: $c";

Any help is much appreciated.
Also, I am using File::Find (Not anymore) and Path::Class for this.

Answer 1

First of all, C:\ProgramData does exist. Configure Explorer to show hidden files, or go to a console and do dir /a c:\, and you'll see it.

The error is for C:\ProgramData\Application Data. Now, I don't have a directory by that name, but I get a similar error for C:\Config.Msi. It's flagged as a system file. It's probably best to avoid those.

You could use eval to catch the error and ignore that directory when you get the error, or you could use Win32::File to skip dircetories flagged as system files preemptively.

---

The calling convention is C-ish rather than Perlish.

use Win32::File qw( GetAttributes SYSTEM );

GetAttributes($qfn, my $attrs)
   or die("$^E");

if ($attrs & SYSTEM) {
   ...
}