rsFalse has given you a good general-purpose answer. However, since you are manipulating dates, you could always use a date module such as the core module Time::Piece.

use strict;
use warnings;

use Time::Piece;
use Test::More tests => 1;

my $date = '3-15-1932';
my $want = '1932-03-15';

my $have = Time::Piece->strptime ($date, '%m-%d-%Y')->date;
is $have, $want;
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