Programming in Perl

Homework 1

Frequently Asked Questions

Part A
  1. What do we do if the "file" the user selects is actually a directory?
    In this case, it is acceptable to simply print an error message and exit the program.
  2. Should entries in a directory that represent sub-directories be printed out, or just the entries that represent files?
    You can print out all entries in a directory, including sub-directories, and including the special . and .. directories.
  3. Do we have to worry about directories being entered using the special unix symbol ~ (as in ~lallip/)?
    No. ~, ?, and * are all special Unix symbols. They only make sense to Perl if you pass them through the glob() function, which we haven't talked about yet. For this assignment, you may presume only absolute or relative directory names will be given.
Part B
  1. When sorting, should we print out all duplicate words, or just unique words?
    Unique words only, no duplicates. Note however that by our definition of 'word' for this assignment, "Hello" and "hello" are distinct words, as are "world" and "world."