I need to know how to make today's date (localtime()) put the day, month and year in a format like: 01.08.04.

I use POSIX::strftime() for most of my date formatting.

Can someone show me how I would compare a date string like 01.08.04 with a different $time?

If you have your times in seconds since epoch (and you don't care about too much exactness:

if ($time < time - $days * 24 * 60 * 60) { .... }
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If you have formatted dates, or higher standards, go for Date::Manip.

HTH,
Joost.