Can someone help me regarding how I can do that within my $step variable? How can I say "if we are at step x, check step x-1 exists and create step x+1"?

At this point you really should step back from your thinking on how to solve your "problem" and reexamine the overall task. Please say what you're really trying to do (beyond manipulating filenames), and especially what data you want to have available as your "backup."

It's possible that your whole premise "a script for data handling that will loop through a variety of files and do a variety of things" could be misguided.

The way forward always starts with a minimal test.

In reply to Re^3: check for latest file, remove and touch file? by 1nickt
in thread check for latest file, remove and touch file? by fasoli

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.