Hello, just wondering, if you read a directory with, lets say 500,000+ files.....what happens? Will it take forever for your perl script to execute via web browser?

i intend to make a little script that sorts a directory by last modified, reads the files inside the directory, and then match all filenames with a certain "name" inside it. the filenames all have a certain format: name[date].txt  ex - bobby2006-05-08.txt

I basically need the last uploaded text file for each user homepages. So if they goto bobby's homepage, then they will see the last uploaded text file.

now i have problem that i ran into. i realized i can not rely on sorting the directory by last modified because these uploaded text files may be edited. so bobby2006-05-05.txt was edited today on 2006-05-08. however, bobby also uploaded a text file yesterday, meaning the file 2006-05-07.txt exists.

so if i was to rely on the systems last modified, it will show bobby2006-05-05.txt and not the most recent text that was uploaded yesterday (bobby2006-05-07.txt)

i'm still not that good with Perl and i've been trying to come up w/ a solution the last 3-4 hours and no luck. if anyone can help guide me to learn this then i will be very greatful.

cheers,
nick

2006-05-10 Retitled by planetscape, as per Monastery guidelines

( keep:5 edit:21 reap:0 )

Original title: 'reading a directory efficiency'

In reply to efficient way to find most recently modified files? by Anonymous Monk

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