You could look at Inotify, Win32::FileNotify or some other notification mechanism for your OS.

Other than that, there is no mechanism other than getting the full list of directory entries and looking for the changes.

are you monitoring all the files in the directory tree or are you interested in tracking only a limited number of them? I am asking because if you're monitoring only a smaller number of files (and not each and every file in the directory tree), then it might possibly be better (faster) not to comb through the whole directory with File::Find, but rather to start from the list of files in your hash and check only these files' age with the relevant file test operator.

May be you actually want a "hotfolder".

On Linux (which i don't have anymore) there is File::Hotfolder.

Here is a sketch written in a hurry and not thoroughly tested for the Mac using Mac::FSEvents:

#!/usr/bin/env perl

use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dump;
use Mac::FSEvents;
use IO::Select;
use feature qw(say);

my $dir = q(/Users/karl/Desktop/somewhere;

my $fs = Mac::FSEvents->new(
    path        => $dir,
    file_events => 1,
);

my $fh = $fs->watch;

my $select = IO::Select->new($fh);

while ( $select->can_read ) {
    my @events = $fs->read_events;
    # dd \@events;
    for my $event (@events) {
        say $event->path;
        say for ( stat( $event->path ) )[ 7, 9 ];
    }
}

__END__
[download]

With File::Hotfolder something similar should be possible.

Best regards, Karl

Hello colox

In the past "something similar" was asked from another fellow Monk see Method to verify an environment with changes.

You might be looking for something like:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use File::stat;
use Data::Dumper;
use Time::localtime;
use File::Find::Rule;

sub get_files {
    my @dirs = ('/home/user/Monks' , '/home/user/Monks/mySubDir'); # a
+dd more
    my $level = shift // 2; # level to dig into

    my @files = File::Find::Rule->file()
    ->name('*.xml', '*.txt') # add your file(s) extension(s)
    ->maxdepth($level)
    ->in(@dirs);

    return @files;
}

my @files = get_files();

my %hash;
for (@files) { $hash{$_} = ctime(stat($_)->mtime); }
# or # for (@files) { $hash{ctime(stat($_)->mtime)} = $_; }

print Dumper \%hash;

__END__

$ perl test.pl
$VAR1 = {
          '/home/user/Monks/ArabicCharacters/original.txt' => 'Fri Jul
+ 28 13:21:04 2017',
          '/home/user/Monks/out.txt' => 'Thu Jul 20 13:29:41 2017',
          '/home/user/Monks/filter.txt' => 'Thu Jul 13 11:03:53 2017',
          .
          .
          .
        };
[download]

Although you said that you have implemented something similar, I would combine it with git CPAN module(s). At the end with the help of git you can check for the file(s) when they where last updated based on the date and then check what has changed and by whom?

Hope this helps, BR.