Getting Today's Date - Strange Problem

svsingh has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I needed to stick today's date into the output for a program and couldn't get it to work. I followed the Cookbook's example too. Here's the defective code:

use strict;
use Time::localtime;

my ($day, $month, $year) = (localtime)[3,4,5];
print "$month/$day/$year\n";
my $s = "$month/$day/$year";
print "s: $s\n";
[download]

And it returns:

Use of uninitialized value at test.pl line 5.
Use of uninitialized value at test.pl line 5.
Use of uninitialized value at test.pl line 5.
//
[download]

Now, here's the strange part. If I remove the use Time::localtime; line, then the script does exactly what it's supposed to. I couldn't find any mention of this being a bug and all of the examples I'm seeing include the use ... line.

By leaving out the line, am I going to run into problems down the road? Thanks for your advice.

I'm also aware this will print 103 as the year. I'm using the straight value for simplicity here.

Comment on Getting Today's Date - Strange Problem Select or Download Code

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Re: Getting Today's Date - Strange Problem by Zaxo (Archbishop) on May 28, 2003 at 03:31 UTC
Your code is fine without `Time::localtime`, which is just a hashed(?) modification of the builtin localtime. You are using the builtin correctly. You may be interested in `POSIX::strftime`, which formats time strings from the list output of localtime. After Compline, Zaxo	[reply]
Re: Getting Today's Date - Strange Problem by JamesNC (Chaplain) on May 28, 2003 at 05:10 UTC
Looks like a namespace problem when you use Time::localtime, the pod for Time::localtime; shows localtime namespace being an Time::tm=ARRAY(0x224f8c) and the localtime3,4,5 assign ARRAY refs as well, if you use the module looks like you need to do this... it kinda looks cleaner than trying to remember what array element maps to what... ++ for interesting question `use Time::localtime; my $year = 1900 + localtime->year; my $month = 1 + localtime->mon; my $day = localtime->mday; print "$year-$month-$day\n"; #OUTPUT: 2003-5-28` [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Getting Today's Date - Strange Problem by NetWallah (Canon) on May 28, 2003 at 05:15 UTC
According to the documentation, Time::localtime overrides the core localtime() function, replacing it with a version that returns "Time::tm" objects. Your "use" statement caused localtime() to return OBJECTS, instead of an array, which caused the errors you posted. The previous monks answer is right on - you don't need the "use" statement.	[reply]