use Date::Calc qw(Delta_YMDHMS Today_and_Now); # @d arrays are (y,mon,d,h,min,s) my @dt1 = Today_and_Now(); sleep(2); my @dt2 = Today_and_Now(); my @dt = Delta_YMDHMS( @dt1, @dt2 ); printf "%02d/%02d/%04d %02d:$02d:$02d", @dt[2,1,0, 3..5];