Need efficient way to fetch 20 last modified files from folder

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

Code like map {(stat $_)[9]} readdir($handle) takes up to 2-3 seconds, because there are up to tens thousands files in some folders.

I guess there is some index by mdate in file system, so it is possible to fetch 20 last modified files efficiently.

How to do so?

(I need to run script on various Windows servers, no UNIX. So my guess is to use some WINAPI calls?)

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Re: Need efficient way to fetch 20 last modified files from folder by GrandFather (Saint) on Aug 25, 2012 at 00:30 UTC
I guess there is some index by mdate in file system Then most likely you guess wrong. Even if such an index exists in some versions of Windows for some disk format, it is not universally true. Your best bet if you can is to restructure the directory layout so that you don't end up with large numbers of files per folder and can efficiently find stuff. Even better, if you have end to end control of this system, use a database for storing the file locations, touch times and other interesting meta data. Another alternative is to use the file change notification system Windows provides to maintain a database of file touch times independently of the OS. True laziness is hard work	[reply]
Re: Need efficient way to fetch 20 last modified files from folder by rpnoble419 (Pilgrim) on Aug 25, 2012 at 01:46 UTC
I have used this in the past to monitor when a file was added to a directory for printing. Win32::FileSystem::Watcher I was able to modify the example code to perform the print task I needed.	[reply]
Re: Need efficient way to fetch 20 last modified files from folder by Anonymous Monk on Aug 24, 2012 at 22:55 UTC
chomp(my @newest = (`dir /A-D /O-D /D`)[5 .. 24]); # lines 0 - 4 - hea +der say for @newest; [download] If for Windows only, the switches, `/A-D files only /O-D ordered from newest to oldest /D output in column` [download] Don't know if this will be faster for you. Type `help dir` at your command prompt.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Need efficient way to fetch 20 last modified files from folder by philiprbrenan (Monk) on Aug 30, 2012 at 18:51 UTC
I think you would have to descend into C and use Windows API calls directly to get a further performance improvement. However, the cost to you in your time of doing such a project is unlikely to be repaid from the time saved. 2-3 seconds sounds pretty good on that basis.	[reply]