use DateTime;
  use DateTime::TimeZone;

  #For testing
  
  $zone = "America/Chicago";
  $date = "8/5/1967";
  $time = "8:30:00";
  
  my $tz = DateTime::TimeZone->new( name => $zone );
  ($day,$month,$year) =~ split(/\//,$date);
  ($hour,$minutes,$seconds) =~ split(/\:/,$time);
  
  my $dt = DateTime->new(
      year       => $year,
      month      => $month,
      day        => $day,
      hour       => $hour,
      minute     => $minutes,
      second     => $seconds,
  );
[download]

($hour,$minutes,$seconds) =~ split(/\:/,$time);
print join "|", ($hour,$minutes,$seconds);
--
||
[download]

"=~" ne "="; :P --> use strict; use warnings;

Oh crap... the =~ in split... :/

This is the fourth time you've been told to use warnings; use strict; (1, 2, 3). use warnings; use strict; is also the first item on the Basic debugging checklist. The second item on the Basic debugging checklist, printing your values, would have shown you that your original assumption "the values are not empty" was wrong.