Thanks L~R, I took your advice, but with the same result. Below is the code for my entire foreach loop. I suspect the problem might be in the first line of the loop, although the first if statement works fine.

foreach my $file ($ftp->ls()) {
print "in the foreach loop at $file\n";
if (!($file=~/.?\.stm/)) { print "$file is not an .stm type file\n"; next; }
my $mtime = $ftp->mdtm($file);
die "cannot get mdtm\n" if ! $mtime;
print "modified time is $mtime\n";
chomp($mtime);
if (!($mtime=~/\d+/)) {
print "skipping $file\n";
next;
}
if ($mtime<$timeThen) {
print "Removing $file: ";
$connect->delete($file);
print $ftp->message;
}
}

This works in that any file that is not a .stm file shows up in the "not an .stm file" message. The program exits on the die "cannot get mdtm" line the first time an .stm file is found.
Any advice gratefully received
thanks
stewartski

In reply to Re: Re: using $ftp->mdtm($file) by stewartski
in thread using $ftp->mdtm($file) by stewartski

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