How do I access network shares from Perl in Windows?

Question

How would you explore and write to windows shared directories in perl ? Note: I don't have the right for network drive creation on the concerned workstation. I tried (without results) the following :

my $ROOTDIR1 = 'c:/';
my $ROOTDIR2 = '//server/dir1/dir2/';
sub dtest {
  my $ROOTDIR = shift;
  warn "Testing '$ROOTDIR'.";
  opendir( SHAREFILE, "$ROOTDIR" ) or warn "1 -> " . $!;
  my @files = <$ROOTDIR*>;
  warn ("2 -> nothing !") if (!scalar @files);
  chdir $ROOTDIR or warn "3 -> " . $!;
}
dtest($ROOTDIR1);
dtest($ROOTDIR2);

But as shown by the following output :

Testing 'c:/'. at E:\test\a.pl line 5.
Testing '//server/dir1/dir2/'. at E:\test\a.pl line 5.
1 -> No such file or directory at E:\test\a.pl line 6.
2 -> nothing ! at E:\test\a.pl line 8.
3 -> No such file or directory at E:\test\a.pl line 9.

None of those methods are working.

Any idea ?

Answer 1

UNC paths should have backslashes.

Answer 2

UNC paths work for me, in ActivePerl 5.12.1 and Cygwin Perl 5.10.1, without a hitch. I would first of all guess that there is no path '//server/dir1/dir2' and I can only think that what you're passing is not a legitimate UNC path to wherever you're actually trying to get.

• Barring that, is it timing out, perhaps? I know that if you do not have a drive mapped to a particular share in Windows, it can be a bear trying to bring up a network share with a bare UNC path, it can often take minutes to load in Explorer.

• Another thing to check is perhaps this is a share that would require you to enter a password upon connecting. I'm not sure if Perl covers the signing on process in Windows. Maybe your network shares only respond to programs who know how to answer a challenge given to them by the server.