Is there any way to compact the code so that it has fewer characters?
Use a hash. Or one of the date modules, like Date::Simple 
use warnings;
use strict;
use Date::Simple qw(today);
print 'today     = ', today(), "\n";
print 'yesterday = ', today() - 1, "\n";

__END__

today     = 2013-08-02
yesterday = 2013-08-01

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In reply to Re^3: Date function by toolic
in thread Date function by Anonymous Monk

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