in reply to value disappears in if statement

localtime can do the parsing for you:
use Modern::Perl qw /2014/;
my ( $day, $mon ) = ( localtime(time) )[ 3, 4 ];
my @months = qw/Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec/;
say "$months[$mon] $day";

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CountZero

A program should be light and agile, its subroutines connected like a string of pearls. The spirit and intent of the program should be retained throughout. There should be neither too little or too much, neither needless loops nor useless variables, neither lack of structure nor overwhelming rigidity." - The Tao of Programming, 4.1 - Geoffrey James

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