First, thanks for all the suggestions and comments. Particularly merlyn for his File::Find solution and jarich for his excellent explanation of my code and it's errors

This is now the most up to date version of the problem:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

# Author: Ryan Scadlock    with significant help 
#    from Perlmonks merlyn, jarich, and Fletch
# Date: 6 July 2002
# Description: (UNIX only) Recurses through a directory structure and
# checks if more than half of the file in that directory have been use
+d
# in the past 180 days. The path of diectory which are predominately
# unused is apprended to a list.

use File::Find;
# file's date of last access is determining factor
my %access; #$access{$dirname}{old}, $access{$dirname}{new}

my $top = shift || ".";

find sub {
  return unless -f;
  $access{$File::Find::dir}{-A _ > 180 ? 'old' : 'new'}++; #date
}, $top; # put your topdirs here

for (sort keys %access) {
  if ($access{$_}{old} > $access{$_}{new}) {
    print "$_ has more old than new\n";
  }
}

[download]

A few problems remain. 1)This script needs to output to a file. The tree it will be searching contains thousands of directories; which would make that "print" scroll off the top. 2)There is a problem with the line
($ages{$_}{old} > $ages{$_}{new}) {
I get "use of unintialized value in numeric gt at ..." message from the interperter.
However, I am many hours closer to a working script than I was. So: Thanks

In reply to Re: recursive directory question by Aquilo
in thread recursive directory question by Aquilo

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