Your code only returns the oldest file if ls sorts by time. Maybe your ls is an alias. Anyway:

my %stats;
for (<*>) {
  my $mtime = (stat)[9];   ## for atime, use (stat)[8]
  push @{$stats{$mtime}}, $_;
}
my $oldest = (sort { $a <=> $b } keys %stats)[0];
print "oldest: ", (join ',', @{$stats{$oldest}}), "\n";

[download]

Here's another version that doesn't eat so much memory:

my ($timestamp, $files) = ~0;
for (<*>) {
  my $mtime = (stat)[9];   ## for atime, use (stat)[8]
  if ($mtime < $timestamp) {
    $timestamp = $mtime;
    $files = [ $_ ];
  } elsif ($mtime == $timestamp) {
    push @{$files}, $_;
  }
}
print "oldest: ", (join ',', @{$files}), "\n";

[download]

I'm thinking of some way of doing it with map. This somewhat golfed version uses GRT for sorting and returns only one file:

my $oldest = (map { substr $_,10 } sort map { sprintf "%010ld$_", (stat)[9]; } <*>)[0];

Update: Fixed sort numerically vs ASCIIbetically. Added two more versions.

--
David Serrano

In reply to Re: grab oldest file by Hue-Bond
in thread grab newest file by hasimir44

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