I think you're losing us on the logic of what you'll input into the programs. Search for files is trival for your case. Let me extrapolate from what you've stated:

The program will be given two parameters: a time range and a date or date range or the current date, if not specified. You want a list of all files that are within that time range on those dates (or solitary date).

Input parsing isn't that hard:

my $times = $ARGV[1];
my ($start_time, $end_time) = ( $times =~ /^(\d{6})-(\d{6})$/ ) or die
+ "Time values are not in correct form\n";

my $dates = $ARGV[2] ||
    strftime ("%y%m%d", localtime); # make sure to use POSIX qw(strfti
+me);

my $start_date, $end_date;
if ( ! (($start_date, $end_date) = ( $dates =~ /^(\d{6})-(\d{6})$/ ) )
+ ) {
   ( $start_date ) = ( $dates =~ /^(\d{6})$/ ) or die "Date values not
+ in correct form";
   $end_date = $start_date;
}
[download]

At which point I'd do some basic checking (eg make sure "010231" wasn't entered as a date...

Search now is easy.. once you have a list of files, or a way to get the list of files one by one...

my @matched;
foreach $file ( @filelist ) {   # or a while loop...
    my ( $fdate, $ftime ) = ( $file =~ /(\d{6})(\d{6})$/ );
    if ( ( $fdate >= $start_date ) && ( $fdate <= $end_date ) 
         && ( $ftime >= $start_time ) && ( $ftime <= $end_time) ) {
      push @matched, $file;
    }
}
[download]

Of course, this is all untested code, and it may not match exactly how you are setting up your file.

---

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