The following code gives me a table made from data in lots of small files. It works quite well. However I now need to make it list in date/time order with newest at the top. 
opendir THEDIR, "$basepath$ARGV[0]" || die "Unable to open directory: 
+$!";
    @allfiles = grep /^2/,readdir THEDIR;
    closedir THEDIR;
    $numfiles = @allfiles;
    $numfiles = ($numfiles - 2);

foreach $file (sort { ($b) <=> ($a) } @allfiles) {
    

if (-T "$basepath$ARGV[0]/$file") {
$passflag = 0;
open THEFILE, "$basepath$ARGV[0]/$file";
($ref, $cust, $email, $phone, $mobile, $posted) = <DATAFILE>;
close DATAFILE;
chomp($ref, $cust, $email, $phone, $mobile, $posted);
$file =~ s/\.DAT//;
print"<TR><TD>$ref</td><TD>$cust</TD><TD>$email</TD><TD>$phone</TD><TD
+>$posted</TD></TR>\n " unless ($passflag);
print "</TABLE>\n";
}}}

[download]
Actually, I can do this by creating the filenames in a way that lets me sort them in date/time order (don't laugh I am a newbie to perl "year+dayofyear+hour+minute+a few random letters to avoid duplication" this gives me "1022001836abc.dat") this is no longer possible as the data i have to play with now, although holding the same information has a different naming system that I can't change "123456.dat" my question is, How can I create the same table listed in date/time order with the newest at the top regardless of what the filenames are?

In reply to open, chomp, create AND sort ? by Cockneyphil

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