UPDATE In the interests of having a workable skeleton that takes account of Fastolfe's point below about -M not being time-compatible, this code has been modified from its original form

You could use the builtin -M test, to find out the last time the file was modified (see Fastolfe's comment below for why this might not be the best way to get the time!).

Here's something skeletal you could build on. 

my @today = (localtime)[3..5]; # gets day, month-1, and year
my $last_modified = (stat($tied_hash_file))[9]; # grab the modificatio
+n time
my @last_modified_date = (localtime($last_modified))[3..5];

# search perlfaq4 (I think) for the compare_array routine!

# ... tie the hash, then

%tied_hash = () unless compare_array(\@today, \@last_modified_date);

[download]

Philosophy can be made out of anything -- or less

In reply to RE: RE: Re: A Tied Dated Hash? by arturo
in thread A Tied Dated Hash? by princepawn

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.