It just occurred to me that a GRTish, guaranteed-single-pass solution is possible: 

c:\@Work\Perl\monks>perl -wMstrict -le
"use List::Util qw(maxstr);
 ;;
 my @dates = qw(
   12112014
   12012014
   01052015
   12202014
   12022014
   02202015
   03102015
   01012011
   09092015
   04092015
   );
 ;;
 my $most_recent =
   unpack 'x4a*',
   maxstr
   map pack('a4a*', unpack('x4a4', $_), $_),
   @dates
   ;
 ;;
 print $most_recent;
"
09092015

[download]
Use  minstr for least-recent date. See the core module List::Util. No efficiency/performance testing done nor claims made. (Update: Actually, I'd be surprised if there's any advantage unless you're dealing with really large lists; default sort (with no subroutine block) is pretty fast!)

Update: See also pack, unpack, perlpacktut.

Give a man a fish:  <%-{-{-{-<

In reply to Re^2: Sort directories by date by AnomalousMonk
in thread Sort directories by date by Anonymous Monk

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