Tangential, but you might look at POSIX and strftime or something like DateTime::Format rather than monkeying with reimplementing wheels.

As to your question you can see how the precedence changes omitting the parens plays out if you stick -MO=Deparse,-p before the -e.

Update: Yeah, what he said below.

The cake is a lie.
The cake is a lie.
The cake is a lie.

In reply to Re: Where did all the time go? by Fletch
in thread Where did all the time go? by ExReg

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