How to call a system file selection dialog using perl on windows?

Question

I know many perl based gui module would do that easily but I am curious about methods other than Prima or Tk etc.
I want to call this dialog (Exactly looking as Windows Explorer) for a command line package.

Is anything similar to system(''); command possible.

Pls Mind that, I need to open and process the file/s selected by such dialog via perl.

Answer 1

It's not easy, first you have to build the data structure needed by the OpenFileDialog api, interact with the system at a low level, track file handles, then get and parse the resulting structure.

There are some horrible hacks where you save a windows script, and run it from perl using a system as you suggested. Keep in mind this requires the right permissions, and scripting languages installed.

# From http://www.pcreview.co.uk/threads/launching-a-search-explorer-exe-form-the-command-line.1468270/
system( q{"echo CreateObject("Shell.Application").FindFiles >%temp%\myff.vbs"} ); #setup script
my @files = system( "cscript.exe //Nologo %temp%\myff.vbs" ); # Get files
system( "del %temp%\myff.vbs" ); # Cleanup

The authors of Win32::GUI have done a great job of simplification,

my @file = Win32::GUI::GetOpenFileName ();

Or with some helpful options like filtering, starting directory and window title.

# A simple open file with graphic filers
my ( @file, $file );
my ( @parms );
push @parms,
  -filter =>
    [ 'TIF - Tagged Image Format', '*.tif',
      'BMP - Windows Bitmap', '*.bmp',
      'GIF - Graphics Interchange Format', '*.gif',
      'JPG - Joint Photographics Experts Group', '*.jpg',
      'All Files - *', '*'
    ],
  -directory => "c:\\program files",
  -title => 'Select a file';
push @parms, -file => $lastfile  if $lastfile;
@file = Win32::GUI::GetOpenFileName ( @parms );