That will stat all files more than once (remember, sort is N*log(N)), and will, particularly for large directories, break down horribly in performance. The least you can do here is a Schwartzian Transform or variant thereof.

Also remember that globbing for * will miss any files starting with a dot - if that is of significance.

I'd do something like this:

my ($age, $name) = (0, "");
opendir DIR, $directory;
while(my $curname = readdir DIR) {
    my $curage = (stat "$directory/$curname")[9];
    next unless -f _;
    ($name, $age) = ($curname, $curage) if $curage > $age;
}
closedir DIR;
[download]

But that still doesn't address the recursive nature of the original poster's task. Zaxo makes the right points.

Makeshifts last the longest.