NAME

       Dir::Purge - Purge directories to a given number of files.

SYNOPSIS

         perl -MDir::Purge -e 'purgedir (5, @ARGV)' /spare/backups

         use Dir::Purge;
         purgedir ({keep => 5, strategy => "by_age", verbose => 1}, "/spare/backups");

         use Dir::Purge qw(purgedir_by_age);
         purgedir_by_age (5, "/spare/backups");

DESCRIPTION

       Dir::Purge implements functions to reduce the number of files in a directory according to
       a strategy. It currently provides one strategy: removal of files by age.

       By default, the module exports one user subroutine: "purgedir".

       The first argument of "purgedir" should either be an integer, indicating the number of
       files to keep in each of the directories, or a reference to a hash with options. In either
       case, a value for the number of files to keep is mandatory.

       The other arguments are the names of the directories that must be purged. Note that this
       process is not recursive. Also, hidden files (name starts with a ".") and non-plain files
       (e.g., directories, symbolic links) are not taken into account.

       All directory arguments and options are checked before anything else is done. In
       particular, all arguments should point to existing directories and the program must have
       read, write, and search (execute) access to the directories.

       One additional function, "purgedir_by_age", can be exported on demand, or called by its
       fully qualified name. "purgedir_by_age" calls "purgedir" with the "by age" purge strategy
       preselected. Since this happens to be the default strategy for "purgedir", calling
       "purgedir_by_age" is roughly equivalent to calling "purgedir".

WARNING

       Removing files is a quite destructive operation. Supply the "test" option, described
       below, to dry-run before production.

OPTIONS

       Options are suppled by providing a hash reference as the first argument. The following
       calls are equivalent:

         purgedir ({keep => 3, test => 1}, "/spare/backups");
         purgedir_by_age ({keep => 3, test => 1}, "/spare/backups");
         purgedir ({strategy => "by_age", keep => 3, test => 1}, "/spare/backups");

       All subroutines take the same arguments.

       keep
           The number of files to keep.  A negative number will reverse the strategy. See option
           "reverse" below.

       strategy
           Specifies the purge strategy.  Default (and only allowed) value is "by_age".

           This option is for "purgedir" only. The other subroutines should not be provided with
           a "strategy" option.

       include
           If this is a reference to a subroutine, this subroutine is called with arguments
           ($file,$dir) and must return true for the file to be included in the list of
           candidates,

           If this is a regular expression, the file file will be included only if the expression
           matches the file name.

       reverse
           If true, the strategy will be reversed. For example, if the strategy is "by_age", the
           oldest files will be kept instead of the newest files.

           Another way to reverse the strategy is using a negative "keep" value.  This is not
           unlike Perl's array subscripts, which count from the end if negative.

           A negative "keep" value can be combined with "reverse" to reverse the reversed
           strategy again.

       verbose
           Verbosity of messages. Default value is 1, which will report the names of the files
           being removed. A value greater than 1 will produce more messages about what's going
           on. A value of 0 (zero) will suppress messages.

       debug
           For internal debugging only.

       test
           If true, no files will be removed. For testing.

EXPORT

       Subroutine "purgedir" is exported by default.

       Subroutine "purgedir_by_age" may be exported on demand.

       Calling purgedir_by_age() is roughly equivalent to calling purgedir() with an options hash
       that includes "strategy =" "by_age">.

       The variable $Dir::Purge::VERSION may be used to inspect the version of the module.

AUTHOR

       Johan Vromans (jvromans@squirrel.nl) wrote this module.

COPYRIGHT AND DISCLAIMER

       This program is Copyright 2000 by Squirrel Consultancy. All rights reserved.

       This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of
       either: a) the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation;
       either version 1, or (at your option) any later version, or b) the "Artistic License"
       which comes with Perl.

       This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY;
       without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
       See either the GNU General Public License or the Artistic License for more details.