Re: Is too little too much? Coding under the microscope...

[Abigail]

Well, if you have a large amount of files and you want to find the newest, the only reasonable optimization of your sort is the removal of said sort! You don't need more than a single pass (using linear time) to find an extreme.

    my $extreme = [365_000, undef];
    foreach (<*.log>) {
        $extreme = [-M, $_] if $extreme -> [0] > -M
    }
    my $newest = $extreme -> [1];

And if you want to sort them, faster than an Orcish Maneuvre or a Schwartian Transform is the Guttman-Rosler Transform:

    @files = map {substr $_ => 18}
             sort
             map {sprintf "%017.10f %s" => -M, $_} <*.log>;

-- Abigail