1999-04-22_weather.log.gz 
1999-04-24_weather.log.gz
1999-04-25_weather.log.gz
1999-04-27_weather.log.gz

You get the idea. Now suppose I want to see if files for
a particular date range are available: my attempt at code
is:

($nyear,$sdate,$edate) = @ARGV;

($sday,$smon) = split('-',$sdate);
($eday,$emon) = split('-',$edate);

$sdate_cursor = [$nyear,$smon,$sday-1];
$edate_cursor = [$nyear,$emon,$eday];

@list = `ls -1 *_weather.*`;

foreach $file (@list) {
  
  chomp($file);

  ($date,$dummy) = split(/\_/,$file);
  ($year,$month,$day) = split('-',$date);
  
  last if (compare_dates([$year,$month,$day], $edate_cursor) > 0);
  if (compare_dates([$year,$month,$day], $sdate_cursor) > 0 )
    {
      push (@array, $file) if -e $file;
    }
}



sub compare_dates {
  
  my($a, $b) = @_;
  foreach (0..2)
    {
      if    ($$a[$_]>$$b[$_]) { return  1; }
      elsif ($$a[$_]<$$b[$_]) { return -1; }
    }
  return 0;
}


As you can see from the list of files above, the files
for the 23rd and 26th of April is missing. What could I do
to get the script to report that these files are not
present?????


Thanks in advance.

	Stacy