# This gives you the web standard date format
# Sat, 08 Feb 2003 15:13:54 GMT

use POSIX;
my $date = POSIX::strftime("%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S GMT", gmtime(time()) );
print $date, "\n";

# this will give you dd/mm/yyyy hh:mm:ss for GMT
# note $mday is actual day, $mon 0 = jan, 1=feb, 11=dec
# year is currently 103 ie you need to add 1900 for yyyy
# or subtract 100 and pack with a left zero for yy
my ($sec,$min,$hour,$mday,$mon,$year,$wday,$yday,$isdst) = gmtime(time);
printf "%02d/%02d/%04d %02d:%02d:%02d\n", $mday, $mon+1, $year+1900, $hour, $min, $sec;

# or for localtime
my ($sec,$min,$hour,$mday,$mon,$year,$wday,$yday,$isdst) = localtime(time);
printf "%02d/%02d/%04d %02d:%02d:%02d\n", $mday, $mon+1, $year+1900, $hour, $min, $sec;

# this will give you dd/mm/yy for GMT
my ($sec,$min,$hour,$mday,$mon,$year,$wday,$yday,$isdst) = gmtime(time);
printf "%02d/%02d/%02d\n", $mday, $mon+1, $year-100;

# etc

# perl will preformat datestrings if you call localtime() or gmtime() in 
# scalar as opposed to arrray context. you can see this here
# time() is the default value as you can also see
my @bits = localtime;
my $str  = localtime;
print "
array context:  @bits
scalar context: $str";

__DATA__
Sat, 08 Feb 2003 15:28:14 GMT
08/02/2003 15:28:14
08/02/2003 15:28:14
08/02/03

array context:  14 28 15 8 1 103 6 38 0
scalar context: Sat Feb  8 15:28:14 2003