Perl finds it all much easier if you deal with dates as the number of seconds since 00:00 Jan 1 1970 (this number, incidently, has just passed one billion). The function time gives this value for the current time and the timelocal function (from the Time::Local module) can convert any date or time into this format.

You can then use the POSIX::strftime to convert that value into a human-readable string. Here's an example:

use POSIX 'strftime';

my $now = time;
my $then = $now + (20 * 86_400); # 86,400 seconds in a day
my $then_str = strftime('%d %B %Y', localtime($then));
print "In 20 days time it will be $then_str\n";
[download]

Of course, it's possible to write that more compactly :)

use POSIX 'strftime';

print "In 20 days time it will be ",
      strftime('%d %B %Y', localtime(time + 20 * 86_400)),
      "\n";
[download]

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<http://www.dave.org.uk>

"The first rule of Perl club is you don't talk about Perl club."