Let's start off with the easy part, identifying the location of said element: 
my $i = 0;
foreach my $href ( @array ) 
{
    last if date_larger_than( $href->{ 'date' }, $today );
    $i++
}
# Mark it, if you want, assuming found...
if ( $i < scalar @array ) { #
   $array[$i]->{ 'isnext' } = 1;
}

[download]
That's the easy part. Now, you need to define date_larger_than, which I can think of several possibilities.

If you don't need the textual representation of the data; that is, if you can handle "20010201" as well as "2001-02-01", then you can simply use a numerical comparison, assuming that the hash's dates are changed to the numerical representation as well.

You can change them on the fly, as well: 

my ($y, $m, $d) = ( $date =~ /(\d{4})-(\d{2})-(\d{2})/ );
$date_num = $y*10000 + $m*100 + $d;

[download]
And compare like that.

There's numerous date classes that could probably read that date in into an object, and then use their built in date comparators to see which date is greater.

In this case , for date comparisons, there is definitely MTOWTDI.

Update - Added grouping on the regex above, oops

Dr. Michael K. Neylon - mneylon-pm@masemware.com || "You've left the lens cap of your mind on again, Pinky" - The Brain

In reply to Re: Finding array element by Masem
in thread Finding array element by voyager

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