use 5.020; my $dir = '\\\\server\\share\\my\\path'; opendir my $dh, $dir or die "Can't opendir '$dir': $!"; my @files = map { "$dir\\$_" } # convert filenames to absolute filenames with UNC path grep { !/^\.\.?\z/ } # ignore "." and ".." readdir( $dh ); my %last_modified = map { $_ => -M $_ } # cache the last modified time @files; @files = sort { $last_modified{ $a } <=> $last_modified{ $b } } @files; say $files[0];