Why not use the -M operator to test for the age of the file (result in days). So something like:

sub test_new {
  my ($mydir) = @_;
  my $new_one = 0;
  opendir(DIR, $mydir) or die("...");
  while (my $file = readdir(DIR)) {
    if ($file !~ /^\.+$/ && -M $mydir . '/' . $file < 0.5) {
      $new_one = 1;
      last;
    }
  }
  closedir(DIR);
  return $new_one;
}
[download]

Hope this helps, -gjb-

Update: Stupid me! I tested the script only in the current working directory, obviously the file test should read -M $mydir . '/' . $file < 0.5 rather than -M $file < 0.5 which looks for the file in the script's directory. (modified the original code already). Incidently, the error is easily caught with use warnings; since a warning about the use of an uninitialized value in numeric lt is issued.

Update: Added code to filter out the . and .. directories that were tested as well.

While this will work fine if the files are CREATED there, it may fail badly it they are MOVED. At least if they are moved within one logical disk.

I'd use a hash tied to a DBM containing the last modification dates of all files in the directory and processed all that 1) were not present or 2) have a different modification time.

use DB_File;
tie %ages, 'DB_File', $age_database, O_CREAT|O_RDWR, 0700;
sub test_new {
  my ($mydir) = @_;
  my $new_one = 0;
  opendir(DIR, $mydir) or die("...");
  while (my $file = readdir(DIR)) {
    next if $file !~ /^\.+$/;
    my $mtime = (stat($file))[9];
    next if $mtime == $ages{$file};
    $ages{$file} = $mtime;
    #the $file is new! Process it any way you like
    $new_one = 1;
  }
  closedir(DIR);
  return $new_one;
}
[download]

If all you need to know is whether there was any change then maybe it would be better to generate an MD5 hash of the directory contents (filenames + their modification times) and compare the result with a stored value.

Jenda

I tried this and it seems to return "true" (1 value) on my directory even though last added file is a week old. Please advise what I am doing wrong?

#!/usr/local/bin/perl
use strict;
my $mydir = "/mydirectorypath/directory";
my $new_one = 0;
opendir(DIR, $mydir) or die("...");
while (my $file = readdir(DIR)) {
   if (-M $file < .5) {
   $new_one = 1;
   last;
}
}
closedir(DIR);
print "$new_one\n";
[download]

I modified the original node. Sorry for the confusion, it was silly on my part, -gjb-

It still returns a "1" on my directory even if files are older than a day. Is there something I am doing wrong here???

#!/usr/local/bin/perl
use strict;
my $mydir = "/mypath/directory";
          my $new_one = 0;
          opendir(DIR, $mydir) or die("...");
          while (my $file = readdir(DIR)) {
            if (-M $mydir . '/' . $file < 0.5) {
              $new_one = 1;
              last;
            }
          }
          closedir(DIR);
          print "$new_one\n";
[download]

I updated the code again, see if this helps.

Incidently, why not register, it's much easier to notify you of a change using the chatterbox rather than having to post these otherwise useless notes.

Hope it works for you this time, -gjb-

Heay I wrote a program that deals with detecting changes in a file system.

Check out my Program Archiver. Specifically check out the make_comp subroutine.

The basics of how it works is that it gets the current files in a subdirectory.

Then  it reads a file that has the previous directory contents. 

Then it generates a comparison so it can know if a files is new, changed, unchanged, or deleted.

Hope this helps.

It's a tripwire like ( minus the silly licensing ) utility that will checksum files and directory trees and let you know about all changes. It's also configurable enough to ignore changes you aren't interested in.

Sample output:

AIDE found differences between database and filesystem!!
Start timestamp: 2002-09-23 03:30:00
Summary:
Total number of files=18158,added files=1,removed files=1,changed files=0

Added files:
added:/etc/rc3.d/S7snmpdx
Removed files:
removed:/etc/rc3.d/s76snmpdx

End timestamp: 2002-09-23 03:30:04