#!	/usr/bin/perl



### basic list processing ###

my @array = split /,/, $list;

foreach my $item (@array) {

	# do something with $item

}


### pick item from array at random ###

my $item = $array[ int( rand( scalar @array ) ) ];


### clean up and sort lists ###

sub sort_list {

	my ($list) = @_;

	$list eq '' and return '';		# empty list

	my %hash = ();

	my @array = split /,/, $list;

	foreach (@array) {				# use hash to ensure unique values
		$hash{$_} = 1;
	}

	my $sorted = '';

	foreach (sort keys %hash) {		# sort alphabetically

		$sorted .= $_ . ' ';
	}

	chop $sorted;	# nuke trailing space

	return $sorted;
}


### get file mod timestamp ###

$secs = (stat($path))[9];


### make human readable timestamp from system time ###

sub format_time {

	my ($secs) = @_;

	my ($sec,$min,$hour,$mday,$mon,$year) = localtime($secs);

	$year	+= 1900;
	$mon	+= 1;

	my @months = ('*','Jan','Feb','Mar','Apr','May','Jun','Jul','Aug','Sep','Oct','Nov','Dec');

	return sprintf("%03s %02s %04d %02s:%02s", $months[$mon], $mday, $year, $hour, $min);
}