in reply to read directory

You don't. readdir (and glob) return the entries in the order the OS kernel pleases to present them. You have to sort yourself: 
@files = sort {-M $a <=> -M $b} <*>;

# update - better without -M in sort
opendir(D,$dir);
@files = map { $_->[1] } sort { $a->[0] <=> $b->[0] }
         map { [-M $_, $_] } grep {!/^\.\.?$/} readdir(D);

[download]

A related thread is here.

--shmem

update: added ST after reading TedPride's post ;-) 

_($_=" "x(1<<5)."?\n".q·/)Oo.  G°\        /
                              /\_¯/(q    /
----------------------------  \__(m.====·.(_("always off the crowd"))."·
");sub _{s./.($e="'Itrs `mnsgdq Gdbj O`qkdq")=~y/"-y/#-z/;$e.e && print}

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^2: read directory
by jbisbee (Pilgrim) on Jul 08, 2006 at 14:12 UTC
    Update: Sorry, I know this post was a bit lame and didn't prove anything

    I just benchmarked the difference between "glob" and "<>" and found very little difference (subsequent runs flip-flopped which was faster). If that's the case, then I'd prefer the glob('pending/*') over the <pending/*> call because of the awkward bare word. But then, thats just me. 

    #!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use Benchmark qw(cmpthese);

cmpthese(
    20_000, {
        '<>'   => sub { my @results = <pending/*>; },
        'glob' => sub { my @results = glob('pending/*'); },
    },
);

    [download]
    and the results 
           Rate glob   <>
glob 7194/s   --  -0%
<>   7220/s   0%   --

    [download]

    -biz-

[reply]
[d/l]
[select]
      well, <DATA> also has a bareword.. ;-)

      I'm not surprised that glob and <> down differ much, since they are essentially the same... bigger savings can be achieved by using -M instead of (stat)[9], because doing so eliminates the overhead of making a list just to get its 10th element.

      --shmem 

      _($_=" "x(1<<5)."?\n".q·/)Oo.  G°\        /
                              /\_¯/(q    /
----------------------------  \__(m.====·.(_("always off the crowd"))."·
");sub _{s./.($e="'Itrs `mnsgdq Gdbj O`qkdq")=~y/"-y/#-z/;$e.e && print}
[reply]
[d/l]
[select]
      I just benchmarked the difference between "glob" and "<>" and found very little difference

      That's hardly surprising since glob is the internal function implementing the "<*.c>" operator according to the documentation.

      --
      David Serrano

[reply]

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom