You can disable a prototype rather than bending over backwards to comply to it. 

use DateTime        qw( );
use List::MoreUtils qw( mesh );

my $string = "19830501";

my $date = DateTime->new(&mesh(
   [qw( year month day )] => [ unpack "A4A2A2", $string ] ));

[download]

In reply to Re^2: Coolest way to decode YYYYMMDD? by ikegami
in thread Coolest way to decode YYYYMMDD? by locked_user sundialsvc4

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