Help with sort by creation date 1

[nfaber]

My code below do3s not seem to be working. I want to read some files from a directory into an array and sort them by creation date:

#!/usr/contrib/bin/perl


use strict;
use warnings;

my $dir = "/OV_backup";
my @backups;
use vars qw($b $a);

opendir (DIR,$dir) or die ("Error opening $dir: $1"
my @files = readdir (DIR);
foreach (@files) {
next unless (/^OV_BACKUP.*/);
push (@backups,$_);
}
my @sort=sort {(-C $a) <=> (-C $b)} @backups;
print &quot;@sort\n&quot;;

Here is what I am getting:

&quot;Use of uninitialized value in numeric comparison (<=>)&quot;

and the files are not printed out in creation order in my print statement.

Any help appriciated.

 

[rosenk]

The problem is that the file names are getting pushed onto the array without the path, so -C isn't finding the file.

You can change:
[tt]push @backups, $_;[/tt]
to:
[tt]push @backups, &quot;$dir/$_&quot;;[/tt]

 

[nfaber]

Thanks rosenk, that did it.

 

[mikevh]

A note on $a and $b -- this is from perlvar:

Special package variables when using sort(), see sort in the perlfunc manpage. Because of this specialness $a and $b don't need to be declared (using local(), use vars, or our()) even when using the strict vars pragma. Don't lexicalize them with my $a or my $b if you want to be able to use them in the sort() comparison block or function.