G'day hary536,

Firstly, your problems have nothing to do Mac OS X (the code below was run on Mac OS X 10.7.5).

From the File::stat module's documentation:

"This module's default exports override the core stat() and lstat() functions, replacing them with versions that return "File::stat" objects."

So, if you use this module, don't try to access array elements from stat (or lstat) calls.

Array indices are zero-based. So $moviedir[1] is probably not accessing the element you want.

[From the first reply you received, it would appear your OP originally had $dir[1] where it now has $moviedir[1] (although you don't appear to have changed the "not working" comment). Please do not change your OP without clearly indicating what you've changed. See "How do I change/delete my post?" for details.]

You should also consider whether you want to stat all directory entries (e.g. plain files, directories, symbolic links, etc.) or just a subset of these — in the code below I've excluded everything except plain files.

The scripts that follow are only intended to show that the various functions for determining modification time do work. I created this directory for the tests:

$ ls -al pm_1079278_mtime_test
total 0
drwxr-xr-x    5 ken  staff    170 22 Mar 04:21 .
drwxr-xr-x  584 ken  staff  19856 22 Mar 04:22 ..
-rw-r--r--    1 ken  staff      0 22 Mar 04:19 test1
-rw-r--r--    1 ken  staff      0 22 Mar 04:20 test2
-rw-r--r--    1 ken  staff      0 22 Mar 04:21 test3
[download]

Script using core stat:

#!/usr/bin/env perl -l

use strict;
use warnings;
use autodie;

my $path = './pm_1079278_mtime_test';

opendir(my $dh, $path);
my @files = map { "$path/$_" } readdir $dh;
closedir $dh;

my @sorted_files = sort { -M $a <=> -M $b } @files;

for (@sorted_files) {
    print '-' x 30;
    print "File:  $_";
    next unless -f;
    print '-M:    ', -M;
    print 'stat9: ', (stat)[9];
}
[download]

Output:

------------------------------
File:  ./pm_1079278_mtime_test/..
------------------------------
File:  ./pm_1079278_mtime_test/.
------------------------------
File:  ./pm_1079278_mtime_test/test3
-M:    0.0440856481481482
stat9: 1395422472
------------------------------
File:  ./pm_1079278_mtime_test/test2
-M:    0.0447916666666667
stat9: 1395422411
------------------------------
File:  ./pm_1079278_mtime_test/test1
-M:    0.0450810185185185
stat9: 1395422386
[download]

Script using File::stat:

#!/usr/bin/env perl -l

use strict;
use warnings;
use autodie;

use File::stat;

my $path = './pm_1079278_mtime_test';

opendir(my $dh, $path);
my @files = map { "$path/$_" } readdir $dh;
closedir $dh;

my @sorted_files = sort { -M $a <=> -M $b } @files;

for (@sorted_files) {
    print '-' x 30;
    print "File:  $_";
    next unless -f;
    print '-M:    ', -M;
    print 'mtime: ', stat($_)->mtime;
}
[download]

Output:

------------------------------
File:  ./pm_1079278_mtime_test/..
------------------------------
File:  ./pm_1079278_mtime_test/.
------------------------------
File:  ./pm_1079278_mtime_test/test3
-M:    0.044849537037037
mtime: 1395422472
------------------------------
File:  ./pm_1079278_mtime_test/test2
-M:    0.0455555555555556
mtime: 1395422411
------------------------------
File:  ./pm_1079278_mtime_test/test1
-M:    0.0458449074074074
mtime: 1395422386
[download]