Are you referring to the script needing to read its own create time? Generally, this isn't possible because create time is not stored anywhere (ctime is inode change time since the epoch -- though I've read that it really is create time on MacOS). The closest you will be able to do is use stat to pull up some file statistics for it. Check out File::stat for getting to this information easier.

I think this should get you the ctime (which is the closest you'll get):

my $filename = 'somescript.pl';
my $ctime = (stat $filename)[10];
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If you're trying to find the time for when you're writing a file to a server, something like this can help:

($sec, $min, $hour, $mday, $mon, $year, $wday, $yday, $isdst) = localt
+ime(time);
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That will pull up localtime info that you can play with to your heart's content. However, I understand that localtime is or will be deprecated.

Cheers,
Ovid