I think your parsing of localtime would be a lot easier once you realize that it returns a list if used in a list context. 

#print "Enter a timestamp in mm/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss format: ";
#chomp(my $stamp = <STDIN>);
my $stamp = '11/02/2007 11:02:07';

# Split out various fields for timelocal

my($date, $time) = split / /, $stamp;
my($month, $day, $year) = split /\//, $date;
my($hour, $minute, $second) = split /:/, $time;

# Both timelocal and localtime understand month as in 0 - 11 range

$month -= 1;

# Get time value in seconds since Epoch with timelocal

my $now = timelocal($second,$minute,$hour,$day,$month,$year);

# Add padding (this will become interactive)

my $paddednow = $now + 300;
my @padded_time = localtime $paddednow;

$padded_time[5] += 1900; # year
$padded_time[4]++;       # month

printf "$stamp + 5 minutes is %02d/%02d/%d %02d:%02d:%02d\n",
       @padded_time[4,3,5, 2,1,0];

# 11/02/2007 11:02:07 + 5 minutes is 11/02/2007 11:07:07

[download]

This is a fairly easy way to do this, but one of the date modules that have already been mentioned might make it even easier.

In reply to Re: Attack of the killer timestamps by kyle
in thread Attack of the killer timestamps by chexmix

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