Re^3: Delete all but the most recent backup file

[Kenosis]

You're most welcome!

Yes, Komodo appears to just be alerting you about <DATA>, but should certainly know better, since there's a __DATA__ section.

Try the following:

use strict;
use warnings;
use File::stat;

chomp( my @fileNames = <*.bak> );

my @sortedFileNames = map $_->[0], 
    sort { $b->[1] <=> $a->[1] }
    map { my $stat = stat $_; [ $_, $stat->mtime ] }
    grep /^backup_\d\d_\d\d_\d{4}.bak$/, @fileNames;

shift @sortedFileNames;

if (@sortedFileNames) {
    print "$_\n" for @sortedFileNames;
    #unlink @sortedFileNames;
}

This stats each file for the modification time, using it in the sort. Also, note that a file glob's used to read directory files...

[jagexCoder]

Hi thanks, that works great! I modified the regular expression to the file naming format that we use at work. I just noticed that the system of sorting and preserving the latest backup and deleting the rest is the most efficient - my supervisor and dad (he's a programmer) said the same thing. I don't know why I stuck with the idea of using flags, I guess it's the little mistakes the not-that-experienced programmers make. This is a good learning experience! I'll figure out the syntax related to sorting that has been implemented and understand it fully. Thanks again to both of you - take care!

[Anonymous Monk]

Here is an alternative idea

Archive the backups for a month before deleting them (like zip/7-zip)

Since the files are nearly identical, it should compress really well, so in the same space you have of 24hrs of backups you can have ~20 days of backups (one zip per day), and if you combine those zip/day backups into a single archive, you'll have space for more days :)