Sorry for beeing really far OT this time folks, but I think its an interesting problem, that could not be solved with perl as the only tool but where as always perl could be helpfull.

There might occur a wrong information if a document you are fetching from a remote server will have an "old" content but proclaims to be just generated due to the fact that it was parsed and changed by the server or that it was newly generated due to the use of a content management system and for example a change in the layout that affected the document as well or even worse, the document does not exist at all, but is generated upon request from any datasource.

No, I have no perl solution to this as a search for "Document last modified" or "Last Updated" will not assure to get any such info, especially if you also include files in other languages into your search.

The only thing that I could think of would be "something like a webservice" via XMLRPC or alike, where a server will answer queries for a document URL with an appropriate 

<document mime-type=".." last-modified=".." content="dynamic" />

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But thats just an idea how to avoid conflicts with subjective and objective manipulation date of that document.

The much more simpler approach would be to add an attribute for 'modified' or 'updated' to lets say a 'div' tag. So that for example if I'd visit any node on perlmonks.org it would carry its date with it, which it actually does, so easy to parse, but not always its wanted to have that date displayed. If for example you'd want to search through merlyn's webtechniques' columns it would be helpfull if he' have added such attribute to an article, which by the way gives the ability to mix "old" content and "newer" content, so its not necessary to research the old one again. A small example to get to the end: 

<div id="article" lastmodified="20-02-1989" tmfmt="dd-mm-YYYY">
  <p>paragraph ...</p>
</div>
<div id="article" lastmodified="23-04-1996" tmfmt="dd-mm-YYYY">
  <p>paragraph ...</p>
</div>

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Ok, I'm also aware that PM might be the wrong place for such ideas :-) I just try to give my part to make it a better world ;-)

I really would like to get others ideas or opinions about this - or if I didn't see an already existant solution, please point me to it.

Have a nice day
All decision is left to your taste

In reply to Far OT (was Re: Changing and checking timestamps for) remote (files) by little
in thread Changing and checking timestamps for files by LukeyBoy

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