Re: [MacPerl] New User's MacPerl Questions

[Chris Nandor <pudge@pobox.com>]

At 10.51 -0400 1998.09.16, Jefferson R. Lowrey wrote:
>>4) I'd like to be able to 'watch' a folder (like in AS with an idle
>>timer), is
>>this a MacPerl question, or should I just buy the next book in that
>>UNIX-centric
>>Perl series?
>
>It is a MacPerl question.  It should be possible - unfortunatly I'm not the
>guy to tell you how (Mac guru, Perl newbie).

In MacOS 8.5, it will be possible to attach an AppleScript to a folder, so
when you drop something in it, the AppleScript will execute.  I'm sure that
you could use that compiled AppleScript to call MacPerl directly or to
launch a MacPerl script.

Until then, you can use a loop, but that would tie up MacPerl, making it
unable to do anything else:

  while (1) {
     do_stuff();
     sleep($num_of_seconds);
  }

Or, you can use some version of Cron, which you could set to launch the
script every minute or so, which is bad only because every time it
launches, MacPerl goes to the front.  I wrote a cron in MacPerl which can
always sit in the background, as a standalone app so it does not tie up the
MacPerl app.  Maybe I'll distribute it if people want it.  Not very
polished, and not working perfectly, but oh well.

--
Chris Nandor          mailto:pudge@pobox.com         http://pudge.net/
%PGPKey = ('B76E72AD', [1024, '0824090B CE73CA10  1FF77F13 8180B6B6'])

***** Want to unsubscribe from this list?
***** Send mail with body "unsubscribe" to mac-perl-request@iis.ee.ethz.ch