#!/usr/bin/perl 
 
sub getlast5 { 
  my $dir=shift; 
  my @files; 
 
  opendir DIR,$dir || die "Couldn't open '$dir': $!"; 
 
  for my $x (sort { (stat($b))[9] <=> (stat($a))[9] } readdir DIR) { 
    next if $x eq "." || $x eq ".."; 
    push @files,$x; 
    last if $#files==4; 
  } 
 
  closedir DIR; 
 
  @files; 
} 
 
print join("\n",getlast5(".")),"\n";
[download]

You may want to move the readdir DIR step to a point just prior to the sort so that you can properly filter the directory there... perhaps using a glob or File::Find. This way we can explicitly include only the file types we want, rather than excluding the . and .. (what about .bash_history or such files?) inside the for loop.

I presume that files beginning with a dot where still eligable for transfer as he didn't say anything about that. But if he's mirroring an FTP site, I suppose a

next if $x=~/^\./;
[download]

would be appropriate (and take care of the directory stuff).

---

You be right, ichimunki, by using the example of 'ls -ltr', it doesn't include dot files ;)

opendir DIR,$dir || die "Couldn't open '$dir': $!";

For the main point of your code, I think it's excellent the way that you've used sort() on stat() .
  But, I hope it's helpful to point out that the opendir() statement is broken, as it was written at the time of my response, because it tests $dir for Truth rather than opendir() , and that's not what you want.

To use the perlop '||' with opendir() the parentheses are not optional. Otherwise, use or which is more reliable in statements such as open() and opendir() , because the precedence of or is so low that it doesn't even require those pesky parentheses.

(deleted my own bad -here)

But, as I said, this is a small tweak that shouldn't take away from what seems to me otherwise to be a good idea.


mkmcconn

Additionally, if you want the most recent files, instead of using -r and getting the last five files, you should use the default sort order and get the first five files. Thus:

my @files = (`ls -1t`)[0..4];
chomp(@files);
[download]

However, it might be preferable to do all this in Perl, and avoid spawning a shell and relying on the behavior of ls.

opendir(DIR, '.') or die "Can't opendir '.': $!\n";
my @files = readdir(DIR);
closedir(DIR);

@files = map $_->[0],
         sort { $b->[1] <=> $a->[1] }
         map { /^\./ ? () : [ $_, (lstat $_)[9] ] }
         @files;
@files = @files[0..4];
[download]

my @File=map {(split)[-1]} `ls -ltr|tail -5`;
[download]

ChOas

• You want to skip "." files and directories
• You need the 5 "newest" files
• You want only "regular" files

opendir(DIR,$somedir) or die;
@files=reverse sort {(stat($a))[9] <=> (stat($b))[9]}
        grep(!/^\./ && -f "$somedir/$_" ,readdir(DIR));
( $#files > 4 ) && { @files=@files[0..4] };
closedir(DIR);
[download]

Gave me a chance to learn opendir and map :-)

opendir LSLRT, "$dir" or die "I hate you, $dir: $!";
# rewinddir not needed
@dir = readdir(LSLRT);
closedir LSLRT; # why 'or die,' if we're all done anyways?
for my $dirent (@dir)
{
 next unless ( -f "$dir/$dirent" );
 $mtime{$dirent} = (stat "$dir/$dirent")[9];
}
my @last_five = (map { $_->[0] }
                 sort { $a->[1] <=> $b->[1] }
                 map { [$_, $mtime{$_} ] }
                 keys %mtime)[-5..-1];
[download]

This is evil because I sort the whole thing and then throw away most of it.

For easy-to-maintain:

my @last_five = chomp (`ls -1 --sort=time`)[0..4];
[download]

Corrections: Don't need to reverse in the ls -1 form, and don't need to rewinndir.

N.B. that I use -1 because CygWin's ls will send ANSI colour codes if I leave it off :-(

# snippet of my code using Net::FTP

@files = reverse (map {

    (split (/\s+/))[8]; 
    } `ls -lrt F*`);

    foreach $filename (@files[0..4]) { 

    COPY_FILES;

    }

sub COPY_FILES {

$ftp = Net::FTP->new("$remserv") || die "Could not connect : $!\n";
$ftp->login("$user","$pass");
$ftp->cwd("$dir");
$ftp->put("$filename");
$ftp->quit;

}
[download]