my @dirs2read = ("/tmp", "/u/files"); foreach my $sp_dir (@dirs2read) { opendir SP, $sp_dir or die "Cannot open $sp_dir for reading: $!"; my @files = map { $_->[1] } sort { $a->[0] <=> $b->[0]} map { [ stat("$sp_dir/$_")->ctime, $_] } grep { /\w/ && !/^TA\d{1,8}$/ && !/gz$/} readdir SP; closedir SP; }