I'd do this with glob, -M and sort: 
$report = (sort{-M $a <=> -M $b}<*>)[0];

[download]
While this is short, sorting all files by date only to get at the newest one is a waste, specially for large directories. Also, it does a -M at each comparison in sort.

Using the Schwartzian Transform 

$report = (
  map { $_->[1] } sort { $a->[0] <=> $b->[0] }
     map { [-M $_, $_] } <*>)[0]
);

[download]
eliminates multiple -M calls, but uses more memory, since we build an anonymous array for each file. It appears that this linear approach 
$report = do {
    local *D;
    opendir(D,".");
    my $t = time;
    my $ret;
    while(my $f = readdir(D)) {
        next if $f =~ /^\.\.?$/;
        my $ft = -M $f;
        if($ft < $t) {
            $ret = $f;
            $t = $ft;
        }
    }
    closedir(D);
    $ret;
} ;

[download]
is a cheap way, and it's faster. benchmarking gives 
Benchmark: timing 1000 iterations of do, golf, st...
        do:  8 wallclock secs ( 4.00 usr +  4.21 sys =  8.21 CPU) @ 12
+1.80/s (n=1000)
      golf: 74 wallclock secs (20.15 usr + 53.05 sys = 73.20 CPU) @ 13
+.66/s (n=1000)
        st: 34 wallclock secs (18.96 usr + 14.01 sys = 32.97 CPU) @ 30
+.33/s (n=1000)
       Rate golf   st   do
golf 13.7/s   -- -55% -89%
st   30.3/s 122%   -- -75%
do    122/s 792% 302%   --

[download]

running on my /usr/share/man/man1 directory. Note the big difference in CPU time. -M is 40% faster than (stat)[9], no wonder, it does look only at modification time and doesn't build a list. Benchmarking the call to ls in backticks doesn't make sense, because perl is blocked during the ls run.

--shmem 

_($_=" "x(1<<5)."?\n".q·/)Oo.  G°\        /
                              /\_¯/(q    /
----------------------------  \__(m.====·.(_("always off the crowd"))."·
");sub _{s./.($e="'Itrs `mnsgdq Gdbj O`qkdq")=~y/"-y/#-z/;$e.e && print}

In reply to Re: grab newest file by shmem
in thread grab newest file by hasimir44

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