Thanks NetWallah for the questions. While getting sample data to answer them, I noticed there is a way to de-dup built right into the data stream lines (field 4, the "Y" in my sample, has to be "Y" -> if it's "N", it's a duplicate). If you wouldn't have asked for clarification, I never would have seen that!!

Thank you so much for leading me to a FAR simpler solution than I imagined!!!

Instead of all of those if clauses to add leading zeroes to the date / time elements could you not just use sprintf ? (untested)

my $stamp = sprintf '%02d/%02d/%02d.%02d.%02d.%02d', 
       $year, $mon, $mday, $hour, $min, $sec
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sprintf for time is called strftime :)... Re: error on file open, Re^2: Date plus Time sort from file ( Time::Piece->strptime/strftime example, Re: Subtracting minutes from a string ( Time::Piece->strptime )

It's a long time since I wrote any perl :( Correction

use strict;
use warnings;

my ($sec,$min,$hour,$mday,$mon,$year,$wday,$yday,$isdst) 
     = localtime(time);

my $stamp = sprintf "%02d/%02d/%02d  %02d.%02d.%02d", 
       $year +1900, $mon +1 , $mday, $hour, $min, $sec;

print STDOUT $stamp;
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Output 2014/08/12 10.24.56