The way I always do this is either to use the lt and gt operators on the YYYY-MM-DD string (they'll compare each digit in turn, and the hyphens will be compared simply with each other, so they won't affect the comparison), or to substitute out the hyphens, and then use normal numeric comparison. A couple examples of this are as follows:

my $date1 = "2003-05-20";
my $date2 = "2003-04-19";

if ($date1 gt $date2) { print "Date 1 is bigger" }

# # # alternatively
my $date1 = "2003-05-20";
my $date2 = "2003-04-19";

$date1 =~ s/\-//g;
$date2 =~ s/\-//g;

if ($date1 > $date2) { print "Date 1 is bigger" }
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Hope that helps.

-- Foxcub
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