Yep, it prints just fine on the screen. In fact, if you comment out 'print $mdyt', it prints just fine, too.

You're calling 'system', which runs a command, and returns the exit status (0, no failure). It's the call to system which is printing the date to your screen, not the print statement.

You want:

Update: Oh ... and I'm guessing that you've trimmed down the example from your real code, as you never open FILE.