in reply to Expanding dates
I had to something similar to examine log files
that were in the same format (yyyymmdd). The user
was allowed to specify a range including hours, minutes and
seconds for the contents of the file. I won't go into any
more detail for the same reson about homework that others
have mentioned. However, a good way to check dates is
to use epoch time. See also Time::Local.
Good luck
In Section
Seekers of Perl Wisdom