Any reason not to use localtime to get the system date ?

There is also a Time::localtime which you can use.

($day, $month, $year) = (localtime)[ 3, 4, 5 ];
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The problem with what you are trying to do is that you need to use backticks or the qx operator if you want to trap the output of the command. The 0 you see in the text file is the return value from system, which is giving you the status of the call and not what the call wrote to its standard output.

$date = `Date /T`;
print FILENAME $date;
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<cite>Just a tongue-tied, twisted, earth-bound misfit. -- Pink Floyd</cite>