Perl has a special conditional operator (the ternary ?:) which is custom made for just this type of thing. 
my $T = ($hour > 12) ? "PM" : "AM";

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update: Whoops, just noticed that the OP is also decreasing $hour for the "PM" case. In that case, the ternary operator becomes a little more ugly. 
my $T = ($hour > 12) ? do {$hour-=12; "PM"} : "AM";

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Your best bet is probably one of the CPAN modules like dragonchild recommends.

-- All code is 100% tested and functional unless otherwise noted.

In reply to Re: Basic programming question by sleepingsquirrel
in thread Basic programming question by j.goor

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