You could just change the 'map' to 'grep' in your non-functional example. But that seems wasteful. Don't go through more files than you need.

my $file = $0;
{
  return if (stat $_)[9] > $ft;
  do { $file = glob "$dir/*" } until -f $file;
  redo if defined $file;
}
[download]

Try something like that. I don't think using a do ... until ..., nor a do ... redo is ugly. They exist for specific reasons. However, here's another approach:

for (my $file = $0; defined $file; $file = glob "$dir/*") {
  next unless -f $file;
  return if (stat $_)[9] > $ft;
}
[download]

modified: or

for (my $file = $0; ; $file = glob "$dir/*") {
  last unless defined $file;
  next unless -f $file;
  return if (stat $_)[9] > $ft;
}
[download]

japhy -- Perl and Regex Hacker