... and use the $st for any other checks instead of calling stat($file) each time. The reason: each time you call "stat" its a disk IO, which slows things down.

BTW, this can also be accomplished using the plain stats command by passing the special parameter _ for subsequent calls:

    ($dev,$ino,$mode,$nlink,$uid,$gid,$rdev,$size,
     $atime,$mtime,$ctime,$blksize,$blocks)
                          = stat(_);
[download]

will just grab whatever the last stat($filename) returned without doing unnecessary disc I/O.

Another thing to point out is that Unix systems don't store the file creation time, their $ctime is inode change time, which is the time the file's meta data on disc last got changed. On Windoze (with the NT filesystem), this is indeed the file creation time, you are correct.

--saintmike