$file =~ <DIR>??? Try defined($file = readdir(DIR))

Update: Furthermore, don't forget that readdir only returns a file name, not a complete path.

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings

use File::Spec qw( );

my $dir = '/cdw/dept/dss/home_dir/s006258';

opendir($dh, $dir) 
   or die "Unable to open directory '$dir': $!\n":

while (defined(my $file = readdir($dh))) {
   my $path = File::Spec->catfile($dir, $file);
   my $mtime = (stat($path))[9];
   printf("%s was last modified on %s\n",
      $file,
      scalar(localtime($mtime)),
   );
}

closedir $dh;
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Hey works great, I made a few modifications... Now how would I compare it to a date (say if itsa file that hasnt been modified in 2 days then I need to delete). I just need to know how to compare the date. Im not even sure what type of format $mtime is.. Heres what I changed it to using your code:

$dir = "/cdw/dept/dss/home_dir/s006258";

die("Unable to open directory '$dir': $!")
    unless(opendir($dh, $dir));

while (defined(my $file = readdir($dh))) {
   $path = $dir."/".$file;
    if(-d $path) { 
       $mtime = (stat($path))[9];
    print "$path ,".scalar(localtime($mtime))."\n";
       }
       
}

closedir $dh;
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If that's all you need, you could also use -M, which will give the (floating point) number of days since mtime (counting from the script's start time). probably easier to use than stat()'s mtime in seconds since epoch
"What should it profit a man, if he should win a flame war, yet lose his cool?"

I made a few modifications

That's unforunate.

• $path = $dir."/".$file; doesn't really save you anything over catfile and it's less portable.

• Reguarding xxx if yyy, most people avoid hiding the intent of the statement in yyy like you did.

• I noticed you removed "\n" from the error message. If your error message relies on the line number to be readable, it isn't. It's particularly bad to display the line number in this case because the error is a user input error.

• You unbound the scope of $dh, $mtime and $path by removing my. That's just plain wrong.

Four steps backward.

Now how would I compare it to a date

Two approaches:

• Use if (-M $path < 2) to check if it's too old. Documented in -X.

• Do my $time_limit = time() - 24*60*60; outside the loop, and use if ($mtime < $time_limit) to check if it's too old.

($dev,$ino,$mode,$nlink,$uid,$gid,$rdev,$size,
       $atime,$mtime,$ctime,$blksize,$blocks)
           = stat($file) or die "Can't stat: $!";
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update: ikegami is right. ignore this for now