I think you did not call stat right. to get the accesstime for the file you need to call stat like this:

$t2 = (stat( $file ))[8];
[download]

and -A gives the accesstime in days from the start of the script! to convert it back to a accesstime like the one from -A you have to $^T  - (-A $file) * 24 * 60 * 60;
And the whole example:

$file = "\/etc\/hosts";
$t1 = -A $file;
$t2 = (stat( $file ))[8];
$t3 = $^T  - (-A $file) * 24 * 60 * 60;
print $t1, $/;
print $t2, $/;
print $t3, $/;
[download]