Hello bfdi533,

Unfortunately I do not have anything to contribute to your question, but as I was reading your question I noticed how you collect the `date`.

On the sample of code that you provide us you do not use all the following parameters anywhere $dt and $latest_dt. I assume you are using them somewhere else on your code.

The way that you collect the date it might work on LinuxOS but I guess it will not work on WindowsOS (I assume as I can test it). So in order to make your code able to be executable on all OS I propose the following solution.

test.pl

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use Date::Manip;

# I assume you do not want to use the underscore alternatively just ad
+d it
my $date = UnixDate(ParseDate("now"), "%Y-%m-%d %T");
print $date . "\n";

my $dt = `date +%F_%T`;
chomp $dt;

print $dt . "\n";
my $latest_dt;

my $dateAlternativeFormat = UnixDate(ParseDate("now"), "%a %b %d %T %Z
+ %Y");

print "Starting run at: ".`date`;
print "Starting run at: ".$dateAlternativeFormat."\n";

__END__

$ perl test.pl
2018-04-25 11:28:18
2018-04-25_11:28:18
Starting run at: Wed Apr 25 11:28:18 CEST 2018
Starting run at: Wed Apr 25 11:28:18 CEST 2018
[download]

I am using the module Date::Manip. It is not the easiest module that you can use but the date manipulations that you can do with this module are infinite. Some examples for future study Date::Manip::Examples. Regarding the format of the date when you want to alter it, you can read more about it here: Date::Manip::Date::PRINTF_DIRECTIVES.

Hope this helps for future usage. BR / Thanos