Thanks to everyone that replied to my question. However, I don't think I have explained my problem in enough detail...Apologies.

The created and last modified dates I am after are not the dates that are given by the particular filesystem the file is on but are actually embedded in the file itself. So the suggested stat function will not retrieve the required information (I have tested this and shown that the dates reported by the stat function are not the ones I need).

I can find the required dates by opening the file in Excel and looking at its properties. These dates are NOT the same as the filesystem reports.

In general I will not have Excel installed and am therefore not able to use any vba code, for example, to retrieve the required information.

In fact I will be using a Linux based system to retrieve the info where Perl in installed.

I have already written a Perl module that can retrieve the correct information from the new Excel 2007+ file types as these are simply a set of zipped xml files.

However the older Excel files that I need to analyse are fundamentally binary files as explained in my initial post.

I hope my exact needs are clearer than before.

gauss76

In reply to Re^2: Find Created and Last Modified Date of Excel xls file by gauss76
in thread Find Created and Last Modified Date of Excel xls file by gauss76

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