See this perl.com article on date modules. What dragonchild said -- Date::Calc's your friend.

use Date::Calc qw(:all);

($year,$month,$day) = ($transfer_start_date =~ /(\d{4})(\d\d)(\d\d)/);
($hour, $min, $sec) = ($transfer_start_time =~ /(\d{4})(\d\d)(\d\d)/);

print sprintf "%.3s %.3s %d %02d:%02d:%02d %4d", Day_of_Week_to_Text(D
+ay_of_Week($year, $month, $day)), Month_to_Text($month), $day, $hour,
+ $min, $sec, $year;

# or, simpler and pretty close

print join ' ', Date_to_Text($year, $month, $day), sprintf "%02d%02d%0
+2d", $hour, $min, $sec;
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(code untested)