my $mtime =  $ftp->mdtm($file);
die "cannot get mdtm" if ! $mtime;
[download]

Thanks L~R, I took your advice, but with the same result. Below is the code for my entire foreach loop. I suspect the problem might be in the first line of the loop, although the first if statement works fine.

foreach my $file ($ftp->ls()) {
print "in the foreach loop at $file\n";
if (!($file=~/.?\.stm/)) { print "$file is not an .stm type file\n"; next; }
my $mtime = $ftp->mdtm($file);
die "cannot get mdtm\n" if ! $mtime;
print "modified time is $mtime\n";
chomp($mtime);
if (!($mtime=~/\d+/)) {
print "skipping $file\n";
next;
}
if ($mtime<$timeThen) {
print "Removing $file: ";
$connect->delete($file);
print $ftp->message;
}
}

This works in that any file that is not a .stm file shows up in the "not an .stm file" message. The program exits on the die "cannot get mdtm" line the first time an .stm file is found.
Any advice gratefully received
thanks
stewartski

stewartski,
Perhaps you should take a look at PerlTidy as good indention really helps in readability and bug hunting. Since you have not shown all of the code, I do not know what $timeThen is so I will assume it is an epoch time stamp. You also do not show where $connect comes from? Are you using warnings and strictures? I have never used Net::FTP, but I would guess it should look something like this.

my $stamp;    # set to appropriate epoch time stamp
my @files = $ftp->ls();
chomp( @files );

for my $file ( @files ) {
    print "Testing file : $file\n";
    if ( $file !~ /\.stm$/ ) {
        print "Skipping : $file is not an .stm file\n";
        next;
    }
    my $mtime = $ftp->mdtm($file);
    die "cannot get mdtm for $file\n" if ! $mtime;
    print "$file last modified : ", scalar localtime($mtime), "\n";
    if ( $mtime < $stamp ) {
        print "Removing file : $file\n";
        $ftp->delete($file);
        print $ftp->message, "\n";
    }
}
[download]

Cheers - L~R

Also, don't forget to log off the server. Killing a process before sending 'QUIT^M' to the server is not nice.