in reply to How do I remove newline character from a number got from unix command

The newline is attached because you're executing an OS command to do the work. Try using something more operating system agnostic - e.g. 
use POSIX qw(strftime);

my $date = strftime "%Y", localtime;
print $date;

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or... 
use DateTime qw();
DateTime->now->strftime('%Y');

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If you spot any bugs in my solutions, it's because I've deliberately left them in as an exercise for the reader! :-)

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom