It all depends on what exactly you mean by "synchronized." Are you content to check the last modificatin time, or do you want to check the files themselves. Either way, perl can handle it. :) The above code is a good start (although I would store the values of -M $file1 so that it is not called more than once) and you can throw in some read commands to actually compare the contents. Sounds like a great project for you to try - be sure to ask perlmonks if you get stuck! (and post it to Craft when you are done)