in reply to converting timestamps

Really the only pain here is the day of the week. The rest is easy. Just regex the stamp into its three components and use the month as an index into an array. Alas, the day of the week involves lots of math. Here is my sample (as yet un-optimized) code:
sub TimeStamp($) # Pass the stamp in as YYYYMMDD { $_=$_[0]; if( /(\d{4})(\d{2})(\d{2})/ ) { my $month = (Null, Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep +, Oct, Nov, Dec)[$2]; my $day = int($3); print "$month $day, $1" } else { warn "Invalid input to TimeStamp()" } }