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

Using ActivePerl 623, I'd like to read one file from a directory, but use the file date to pick that file. Any ideas?
  • Comment on How do I pick one file from a directory based on the file date?

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Re: How do I pick one file from a directory based on the file date?
by arturo (Vicar) on Apr 24, 2001 at 02:20 UTC

    File *what* date? Creation? Modification? Last Access time? (I'll confess to not recalling which of these the various Windows versions keep)

    Whichever applies to you, have a peek at perldoc -f stat and perldoc -f -X on your own system (or try stat and/ or perlfunc:_X on this site.

    Other functions you may find useful: grep, readdir.

    HTH

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Re: How do I pick one file from a directory based on the file date?
by SgtClueLs (Novice) on Apr 25, 2001 at 19:55 UTC
    I ran into the same thing. What I had to do is run a system command for a dir to a txt file. Then open the txt file and look at the date. I also had to format localtime to a MSDOS readable date/time. For Instance I created a perl script to check Backup Exec log files based on date.

    Code to Acquire the NT MS-DOS Readable Date
    # Acquire the Local Time Array
($sec,$min,$hour,$mday,$mon,$year,$wday,$yday,$isdst) = localtime(time
+);

# Convert less the "10" so they equal a two char date.
$Month = $mon + "1";
if ($month < "10"){
        $Month = '0' . "$Month";
}
if ($mday < "10"){
        $mday = '0' . "$mday";
}

# Get the last two digits of a year, the way DOS sees file names.
$RealYear = substr($year, 1);
# This created $TimeStampDate into a format found in a DIR command in 
+DOS.  Ex. 03/28/01.
$TimeStampDate = "$Month". "/". "$mday" . "/" . "$RealYear";

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    Sub to create the cmd file to run,a nd run it.
    sub CreateCmdFile {


        $FileName = 'D:\\Perl\\pl\\Check\\' . "$CurrentServerName" . '
+.cmd';
        unlink($FileName);
        open(servercmd, "> $FileName");
        print servercmd '@echo off' . "\n";
        $VeritasLocation = '"\\\\' . "$CurrentServerName" . '\\C$\\Pro
+gram Files\\Veritas\\Backup Exec\\NT\\Data\\*.txt"';
        print servercmd 'dir ' . "$VeritasLocation" . ' > D:\\Perl\\pl
+\\Check\\' . "$CurrentServerName" . '.txt';
        close(servercmd);
        system("$FileName");
}

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    Finally to check the .txt file vs. the date.
    sub FindMatchingDates {
        $ServerDirectoryFile = 'D:\\Perl\\pl\\Check\\' . "$CurrentServ
+erName" . '.txt';
        open(logfilelisting, "$ServerDirectoryFile") or die "Unable to
+ open file: $!";
        @CheckForMatchingDate = <logfilelisting>;
        close(logfilelisting);
        foreach (@CheckForMatchingDate) {
                $SubOfCheckForMatchingDate = substr($_, 0, 8);
                if ($SubOfCheckForMatchingDate eq $TimeStampDate){
                        $AssignedCorrectLogFile = substr($_, 39);
                        chomp($AssignedCorrectLogFile);
                        push(@CorrectLogFiles, "$AssignedCorrectLogFil
+e");
                        $LogFileFound = "1";
                }
        }
}

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    So in this case it pushes the Matching File name to @CorrectLogFile which can be used later.
    Sgt
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