Yup, see gory details of parsing quoted constructs. try perlsyn
To perl, it looks like you maybe want to print( something ) but it can't decide

C:\>perl -MO=Deparse,-p
print (localtime)[2]."\n"
__END__
syntax error at - line 1, near ")["
- had compilation errors.
;

C:\>perl -MO=Deparse,-p
print "".(localtime)[2]."\n"
__END__
print((('' . (localtime)[2]) . "\n"));
- syntax OK
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update: I stuck some stuff out (doesn't apply). Try print ( (localtime)[2], "\n" ). Then edited some (i really rushed on this one).