Re: Finding Oldest File in a Directory

Update: Please note that this solution searches for the files recursively. Thanks to aristotle for the clarification

Use File::Find

Untested

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use File::Find;
use strict;

my $dir = '/path/to/dir/';

my $oldestfile = 0;
my $filename = "No BOT REPORT: ERROR";

finddepth(\&oldfile, $dir);
print "oldest file = " , $filename,$/;

sub oldfile {
    return unless (/BOT/);
    my $mtime = -M $_;
    if ($mtime > $oldestfile) {
        $filename = $File::Find::name;
        $oldestfile = $mtime;
    }
}
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BTW i think you are not getting the files using the readdir due to the context

from perldoc -f readdir

 readdir DIRHANDLE
Returns the next directory entry for a directory opened by "opendir". 
+If used in list context, returns all the rest of the entries in the d
+irectory.  If there are no more entries, returns an undefined value i
+n scalar context or a null list in list context.
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Comment on Re: Finding Oldest File in a Directory Select or Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^2: Finding Oldest File in a Directory by Aristotle (Chancellor) on Oct 08, 2005 at 19:21 UTC
He didn’t say he wants to recurse, nor does his example code indicate anything like that. Why are you using File::Find? Makeshifts last the longest.	[reply]
Re^3: Finding Oldest File in a Directory by sk (Curate) on Oct 09, 2005 at 00:48 UTC
It has been a while since i posted this - I think i looked at the OP's readdir() and somehow felt he is doing some kind of recursion as for just checking the oldest file in a directory can be accomplished using glob or just use the Plain Old Shell and call the script with a `` (check for -d etc.) or `ls -lrt` That said, I agree File::Find might not be the best way to solve this problem but it can* be used to achieve what the OP wants as GrandFather has shown or just eval finddepth and die on finding a directory as finddepth works bottoms-up. I just find it much easier to use File::Find and it is very easy to expand (if recursion is ever required). I am not worried too much about performance in this case even if it is 4X times slower. How many times do i have to remove the oldest file? Am i working with 1000s of files? etc. The OP has not mentioned anything about perormance so i am presuming that arg is not very important. I definitely DO NOT disagree with your comment(s). It is my mistake not noticing that OP did not ask for recursion, I will update my node saying it does recursion and it is upto the OP to choose it or not. cheers SK	[reply] [d/l] [select]


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