Some have suggested using -M $filename. This will return a number of days between the file's last modification and the time your perl program started (which will be negative if the file was modified after your program started).

This is probably what you want to check, e.g. with:

unlink grep -f $_ && -M _ >= 5, glob "$dirname/*";
(see -f, -M, glob, and grep in perlfunc).

But, if your program ran today at 11:00, files modified before 11:00 5 days ago would be deleted, and files modifiedd after 11:00 would not. Your wording "older than five days from the days date" makes me think you may be asking to decide based on just the date of modification, not the time. That's a little more complex.


In reply to Re: Deleting files by ysth
in thread Deleting files by mallen

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":



  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.