SYNOPSIS use File::Create::Layout qw(create_files_using_layout); my $res = create_files_using_layout(layout => <<'EOL'); file1.txt file2(0600) file3.txt(0644) "content":"hello, world\n" dir1/ file1 file2 file3 dir2/(root,bin,0600) # some comment file1 dir3/ anotherfile.txt "content":"secret" file2 EOL DESCRIPTION EARLY DEVELOPMENT. MORE OPTIONS WILL BE AVAILABLE (E.G. DRY-RUN, CHECKING A LAYOUT AGAINST FILESYSTEM, VARIOUS ERROR HANDLING OPTIONS). LAYOUT SPECIFICATION Layout is a text document containing zero or more lines. Each line is either a file/directory specification line, a blank line, or a comment line. Comment line starts with zero or more whitespaces, a # (hash) character, and zero or more non-newline characters as the comment's content. The simplest specification line contains just the name of a file or directory. To specify a directory, you need to add / (slash) immediately after the name: # a file foo.txt # a directory bar/ # another directory baz.txt/ To specify filename containing special characters, like #, you can quote the file using double quotes: "#tmpname#" "filename containing \"quotes\"" The string will be parsed as a JSON string. Permission and ownership. Immediately after the filename or directory name, you can specify permission mode, as well as ownership (owner user/group): # specify permission mode, both are identical file.txt(0600) file2.txt(600) # specify owner as well as user+group dir1/(ujang,admin,0700) Symlink. To create a symlink, add -> (arrow) followed by the symlink target. Like filename, symlink target can be an unquoted sequence of non-whitespace characters, or a quoted JSON string if you want to have whitespace or other special characters: symlink1 -> ../target symlink2 -> "/home/ujang/My Documents" File content. An unquoted JSON hash (object) can be added in the end, prefixed by at least one whitespace to specify extra stuffs, including file content. By unquoted, it means that the enclosing curly braces { .. } is not written: file.txt "content":"This is line 1\nThis is line 2\n" file2.txt(0660) "content":"secret","foo":"bar","mtime":1441853999 Putting files/directories in a subdirectory. Indentation (only spaces, tabs are not allowed) is used for this: dir1/ file1-inside-dir1 file2-inside-dir1 dir2/ file3-inside-dir2 file4-inside-dir2 another-file-inside-dir1 file5-in-top-level file6