Yeah, it dosen't make sense to me either. I had already written the little one liner when someone here mentioned using an ST instead. For the exact same reason you stated above. I am checking the mod time of the same file at a minimum of 2 times, maybe more if the next file makes it out of the <=> operation.

Please keep in mind, this is the first time I have ever used an ST. It is pretty much copied directly from http://www.5sigma.com/perl/schwtr.html.

Here is the benchmark code I used to test it with the results. The directory had 16,108 files in it. Let me know what you think. 

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;
use Benchmark;

 timethese(100,
 { 'chad'   => \&chad,
   'swartz' => \&st,});

sub chad {
   sort{ (-M $b) <=> (-M $a) } glob("*");
}

sub st {
   map { $_->[0] }
   sort { $a->[1] <=> $b->[1] }
   map { [$_, -M] }
   glob('*');
}

[download]

Here are the results of the benchmark:

Benchmark: timing 100 iterations of chad, swartz...
      chad: 118 wallclock secs (56.91 usr + 47.25 sys = 104.16 CPU) @ 
+ 0.96/s (n=100)
    swartz: 1515 wallclock secs (142.33 usr + 1044.36 sys = 1186.69 CP
+U) @  0.08/s (n=100)

[download]

In reply to Re: Print the oldest file in a directory. by gnu@perl
in thread Print the oldest file in a directory. by gnu@perl

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