You need to use a file test operator -M or the stat() function to get the date and the sort() function to sort them. But I bet a Google search would find plenty of examples of code already written, so search yourself:

http://www.google.com/search?q=perl+sort+files+by+date

I'm not sure if it's fast or not, but can you do a ls-t, grep the names, then print them?
Ex.
@x = `ls -t`;

foreach $x (@x)
{
print $x;
}
$asdf = <>;


That was pretty quick with like 20 files, I don't know the throughput for 1000's of files

I post the occasional Perl tip and or whatever I can think of that might be helpful to people that I had a hard time figuring out how to do at my blog
Onaclov Nation

appreciate the help. I'm using a windows machine...will "ls" work on windows? haven't had a chance to try it yet...but i know ls doesn't work in the command shell