use Date::Calc qw(Mktime Decode_Month);

use constant { TIME => 0, POST => 1 };
use constant num_posts => 2;

my @recent;

dbmopen(my %NEWS, "news", 0644) #opening the db
    or die("Error opening news database: $!");
while (my ($localtime, $post) = each %NEWS) {
  my ($weekday, $mon, $day, $hour_min_sec, $year) = split /\s+/, $localtime;
  my $time = Mktime($year, Decode_Month($mon), $day, split /:/, $hour_min_sec);
  if (@recent < num_posts) {
    @recent = sort { $a->[TIME] <=> $b->[TIME] } @recent, [$time, $post];
  } elsif ($time > $recent[0]->[TIME]) {
    shift @recent;
    @recent = sort { $a->[TIME] <=> $b->[TIME] } @recent, [$time, $post];
  }
}