First off, a few style related points to ponder:

1. Be consistent with white space usage. Perl::Tidy is great for cleaning up code
2. Don't use & to call subs, it doesn't do what you think. Use subName(...) instead.
3. Don't use prototypes. They really don't do what you think.
4. Use early exits to clean up error handling logic and remove levels of indentation.

I'd put the code into a subroutine to make testing easier. I'd also simplify the time matching regex and perform the range checking outside the regex. Something like:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;

for my $test ('', '234-10:23', '0:0:1', '0:1', '24:60') {
    my $fail = parseTime($test);

    print "Failed parsing '$test': $fail\n" if $fail;
}


sub parseTime {
    my ($inputTxt) = @_;

    return "Bad input value" if !defined $inputTxt || !length $inputTx
+t;

    $inputTxt =~ s/^\s+|\s+$//g;

    return "Bad time string"
        if $inputTxt !~ /^(?:(\d{1,3})-)?(?:(\d+):)?(\d+):(\d+)/;

    my ($days, $hours, $mins, $secs) = map {$_ || 0} $1, $2, $3, $4;

    return "Bad day count: $days"     if $days > 366 && $days >= 0;
    return "Bad hour value: $hours"   if $hours > 23 && $hours >= 0;
    return "Bad minutes value: $mins" if $mins > 59 && $mins >= 0;
    return "Bad seconds value: $secs" if $secs > 59 && $secs >= 0;

    my $totalSecs =
        ($days * 24 * 3600) + ($hours * 3600) + ($mins * 60) + $secs;

    print "$inputTxt - ${totalSecs}s\n";
    return;
}
[download]

Prints:

Failed parsing '': Bad input value
234-10:23 - 20218223s
0:0:1 - 1s
0:1 - 1s
Failed parsing '24:60': Bad seconds value: 60
[download]

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