The man page claims that Time::Local can handle dates back to 1900

It also claims to be buggy, you see that when reading on. And what you experienced is a bug, see this:

Years in the range 0..99 are interpreted as shorthand for years in the rolling "current century," defined as 50 years on either side of the current year.   ...   Whenever possible, use an absolute four digit year instead.

So however I try, 48 must be 2048 (or 148 in the counting of the   localtime()   builtin function).

Update:
Using the   "absolute four digit year instead"   works though.
Update2:
(except for dates > ~2038 ... uh!)

Cheers, Sören

I admit it, I only read the 'known bugs' section. Thanks.

Spacewarp

DISCLAIMER:
Use of this advanced computing technology does not imply an endorsement
of Western industrial civilization.

From the docs:

Years in the range 0..99 are interpreted as shorthand for years in the rolling "current century," defined as 50 years on either side of the current year. Thus, today, in 1999, 0 would refer to 2000, and 45 to 2045, but 55 would refer to 1955. Twenty years from now, 55 would instead refer to 2055. This is messy, but matches the way people currently think about two digit dates. Whenever possible, use an absolute four digit year instead.

Last time I checked, 2004 - 1948 > 50, so it is assuming that you mean 2048 (stored internally to perl as year 148). As the docs also note:

Please note, however, that the range of dates that can be actually be handled depends on the size of an integer (time_t) on a given platform. Currently, this is 32 bits for most systems, yielding an approximate range from Dec 1901 to Jan 2038.

And 2048 > 2038. So you might want to do as the docs suggest and stick with a four digit year.

Use the full year,

$ perl -MTime::Local -e'print timelocal(0, 0, 0, 25, 11, 1948),$/'
-663274800
$
[download]

Update: fglock, I'm in EDT TZ 5 hours behind GMT in November.

I've got different results - there is a difference of 5 hours from yours. I'm trying to figure out why.

perl -MDateTime -e ' print DateTime->new(year=>1970)->epoch, $/ '
0

perl -MDateTime -e ' print DateTime->new(year=>1948,month=>12,day=>25)
+->epoch, $/ '
-663292800

perl -e 'print +( 663292800 - 663274800 )/3600 , $/ '
5
[download]

Cannot handle date (0, 0, 0, 25, 11, 2048) at - line 2
[download]

I'm trying to convert December 25, 1948 to epoch seconds.

Try one of the wider range date related modules, such as one using the Julian date. You can find a nice comprehensive list here.