in reply to Which module for Time?

Certainly follow up on dragonchild's list of relevant modules. Just in case you're looking for a "maximally portable" approach -- i.e. one the depends solely on core modules, and so does not presume/require installation of optional modules -- then here is an example of how you might use Time::Local for this sort of job:
use strict; use Time::Local; my ( $dy, $mo, $yr ) = ( localtime )[3..5]; my $ref_time = "08:35:00"; # (pm would be 20:35:00) my ( $hr, $mi, $sc ) = split( /:/, $ref_time ); my $ref_sec = timelocal( $sc, $mi, $hr, $dy, $mo, $yr ); my $delta_time = "01:23:00"; my ( $add_hr, $add_mi, $add_sc ) = split( /:/, $delta_time ); my $delta_sec = (($add_hr * 60) + $add_mi) * 60 + $add_sc; ( $sc, $mi, $hr, $dy, $mo, $yr ) = localtime( $ref_sec + $delta_sec ); # don't forget to add 1 to $mo, and 1900 to $yr if/when you use them; # one way to check results: print scalar( localtime( $ref_sec + $delta_sec )), $/;
Basically, the idea is to do delta arithmetic in seconds, and to convert between component values (second, minute, hour, day, month, year) and "seconds since the epoch" as needed. Time::Local::timelocal() converts efficiently from component values to "seconds since the epoch", and localtime goes the other way.

(As an interesting side note, timelocal() will do the right thing if you feed it "out-of-range" component values, e.g. $dy = 31 and $mo = 1 (i.e. February), or $hr = 28, etc.