Are you stuck with Time::Piece ? Two alternatives from Date::Calc are to either use the check_date() method after manually split'ing the string:

[davidrw@host ~]$ perl -MDate::Calc=check_date -le 'print check_date(r
+everse split /-/, "31-02-2006" )?1:0'
0
[davidrw@host ~]$ perl -MDate::Calc=check_date -le 'print check_date(r
+everse split /-/, "28-02-2006" )?1:0'
1
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or to use the Decode_Date_EU() method to do the parse/check all at once:

[davidrw@host ~]$ perl -MDate::Calc=Decode_Date_EU -le 'print join ":"
+, Decode_Date_EU("31-02-2006")'

[davidrw@host ~]$ perl -MDate::Calc=Decode_Date_EU -le 'print join ":"
+, Decode_Date_EU("28-02-2006")'
2006:2:28
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