How do you write a perl script to calculate the age of a file

kleinbiker7 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: How do you write a perl script to calculate the age of a file by ezekiel (Friar) on Jun 19, 2001 at 03:58 UTC
I think the -M operator gives you the number of days since a file was last modified. Hence: `if (-M $filename > 2) { unlink ($filename); }` [download] should work if you want to delete files that were last modified over 2 days ago. -A and -C do the same thing based on last access time and last inode change.	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Re: How do you write a perl script to calculate the age of a file by VSarkiss (Monsignor) on Jun 19, 2001 at 07:32 UTC
Ah, when will the golf urge pass? You could do: `unlink $filename if -M $filename > 2;` saving yourself two parentheses and two squiggly braces. ;-) It even reads exactly as the questioner proposed: "delete the file if it is more than two days old".	[reply] [d/l]
Re: How do you write a perl script to calculate the age of a file by marcink (Monk) on Jun 19, 2001 at 03:59 UTC
Yes. Look at 'man perlfunc' for 'readdir' function and '-M' operator. -marcink	[reply]
Re: How do you write a perl script to calculate the age of a file by petdance (Parson) on Jun 19, 2001 at 07:52 UTC
You can also look up the stat() function if you want the absolute date something was created. xoxo, Andy %_=split/;/,".;;n;u;e;ot;t;her;c; ". # Andy Lester 'Perl ;@; a;a;j;m;er;y;t;p;n;d;s;o;'. # http://petdance.com "hack";print map delete$_{$_},split//,q< andy@petdance.com >	[reply]
Re: How do you write a perl script to calculate the age of a file by kurt1992 (Novice) on Jun 19, 2001 at 07:49 UTC
Perl has the means to do many things, though this particular example can also be solved with the following shell command, or bourne shell script containing this command. Be careful where you invoke this! `# find . -type f -mtime +2 \| xargs -i rm {}` [download] In Perl, you could use the File::Find module in conjunction with the aforementioned -M operator to accomplish the same thing as that shell command, and much more. You should also check out the stat function, which provides detailed inode information. Again, please be careful. This code deletes everything under $dir. `#!/usr/bin/perl -w use strict; use File::Find; my @files = (); my @paths = (); my $dir = '/home/kurtw/perlmonks/test5'; find(\&_filewanted, $dir); for my $file ( @files ) { if (unlink $file) { print "removing $file\n"; } else { print "could not unlink $file\n"; } } sub _filewanted { if ( ((-M $_) > 2) && -f $_ ) { # files, not directories push @files, $File::Find::name; } }` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]