That's not PERL, it looks more like Perl ... furthermore, asking people to be gentle is *muffle* ... if you suspect you're doing something dumb, you probably are ... now on to the code

Don't do that!

Was that too loud? Anyway, my @files=`cd $sourcedir && ls`; is yucky, as is

sub cpnewest {
copy("$sourcedir$_","$destination$_"); 
}
[download]

Do you know how/why cpnewest works? Do you know why it's a bad idea?

And last but not least, where on earth do you opendir DIR?

You could also use a little more whitespace (indent yer code -- perltidy).

What's the purpose of having @files, @dirlist? Does it really matter that you process/check @files first?

I hope this is enough food for thought (if you're wondering what kind of food, angel-food ).