mtime is the number of seconds since 1970 (at least on UNIX-ish systems).
You can compare it to time() to see how old the file is. 

my $mtime = (stat $filename)[9];
my $age = time() - $mtime;

die "HEY! $filename was created in the future!\n"
    if $age < 0;

print "$filename is $age seconds old\n";

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In reply to Re: How do I interpret mtime with stat()? by extremely
in thread How do I interpret mtime with stat()? by Anonymous Monk

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