There's really no need to use date to get the date information - it's slower and you're introducing platform dependencies for no good reason.

You can do it with Perl built-ins like this:

my ($d, $m, $y) = (localtime)[3 .. 5];
++$m;
$y += 1900;
$date = "$m$d$y";
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or, if that looks a little complex, use POSIX::strftime like this:

use POSIX 'strftime';

$date = strftime('%m%d%y', localtime);
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You might also consider using a different naming scheme. Dates in the form MMDDYYYY are illogical and will confuse non-Americans. Why not use the ISO standard of YYYY-MM-DD?

"Perl makes the fun jobs fun
and the boring jobs bearable" - me

On a side note, you may also want to use localtime instead of system as it is less resource expensive.

@d = qw[MON TUE WED THU FRI SAT SUN];
@t = localtime;
$t[4]++; $t[5] += 1900;
open(DOC, "> $d[$t[6]]_$t[3]$t[4]$t[5].doc") or die $!;
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The '_' is a valid character for a variable name, hence Perl looks for $mon_ and doesn''t find it (use strict will tell you that).

You can use $mon . '_' . $date, or $mon . "_$date" or my favorite: "$mon\_$date"

Update: of course you should do this only after performing the magnus manoeuver.

mirod wrote:

The '_' is a valid character for a variable name, hence Perl looks for $mon_ and doesn''t find it

You can also get around this by being a little more explicit in identifying $mon, like so:

print "${mon}_$date";

That way, perl knows precisely which var you want.

I use this whenever my data structs start getting complicated, kind of like using extra parentheses in an expression to make yourself clear.

Whether or not that should serve notice that my data structures are too crufty and I should rethink my design is left as an exercise for the Meditations section. :-)

Peace,
-McD

$filename = $mon . "_" . $date;
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Zigster that would get you MON.DOC_$date

rass, you can try this... i just did and it works... careful of the trailing  \n on the date...

$mon = "MON.DOC";

@name = split (/\./,$mon);

$date = `date`; #(or whatever)

$filename = $name[0] . "_" . $date . "." . $name[1];
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magnus

Dowt, more hast less speed required on my part next time.. Thanks for the correction you are of course quite correct.
--

Zigster

Nice catch magnus (and now you have your own manoeuver ;-), but I just wanted to point out the potential problem of filenames with multiple dots. There are plenty even on this Win32 box.

--
I'd like to be able to assign to an luser

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
my @files=qw(blah.doc.doc
             blah.doc.txt
             blah.doc);
my ($d, $m, $y) = (localtime)[3 .. 5];
++$m;
$y += 1900;
my $date = "$m$d$y";

foreach (@files){
    s/(.*)(\..*)/$1_$date$2/;
    print "$_\n";
}
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$date = qx/date +'%d.%m.%Y (%H:%M:%S)'/;
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But nowadays I'd prefer the use of strftime (like davorg posted) because it's more within perl (I like avoiding systemcalls whenever I know another way)

Regards
Stefan K

$dom = "skamphausen.de";   ##   May The Open Source Be With You!
$Mail = "mail@$dom;  $Url = "http://www.$dom";
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foreach $old_name (glob("*.DOC")) {
  my $new_name = &add_date($filename);
  rename($old_name,$new_name);
}
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$mon = '/accounts/person/code.42/file.MON.DOC';

my ( $d, $m, $y ) = (localtime)[3..5];
++$m;
$y+=1900;

substr($mon,rindex($mon,'.'),0)=".$y$m$d";
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$mon =~ s/(.+)(\..+)/$1_`date \+\%m\%d\%Y`\.$2/e;
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good idea including the date process in the regex. still forgot the /e regex flag though, and the original post used system, not backquotes

______________________________________________
When I get a little money, I buy books. If I have any left over, I buy food and clothes.
-Erasmus

$mon =~ s/(.+)\.(.+)/$1\_$date\.$2/;
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______________________________________________
When I get a little money, I buy books. If I have any left over, I buy food and clothes.
-Erasmus

Instead of using $mon_$date how about this?

my $newFilename = $date;
$newFilename   .= "_";
$newFilename   .= $month;
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I know it's extra lines of code but is easy to read. I have always like concatenating with '.='. Try it you'll like it.

# split name into it's 3 letter day name and the extension
# each part will go in $1 & $2 by default :
$mon =~ /^(\w{3})(\.DOC)/;

# save parts in appropiately named variables :
($day, $ext) = ($1, $2);

# the following code will run the 'date' command and print the output to STDOUT
# however, the return value of the sub 'system' is the exit value of the 'date'
# command execution, which is usually 0 for success, therefore $date would be
# equal to 0 (zero) :
# $date = system ("date \'+%m%d%Y\'");

# what you want to do instead is run the 'date' command with backticks instead
# of 'system'.
# this way, the output of 'date' is not printed to STDOUT, but rather returned
# and stored into $date.
# chomp is necessary to remove the newline character :
chomp($date = `date '+%m%d%Y'`);

# To get the current date. If I want $mon to change to MON_02082001.DOC, what do i do next???

$mon = $day . '_' . $date . $ext;
print $mon;

# the output should be as follows :
# MON_02082001.DOC

by coralyn
e-mail: coralyn@ILoveJesus.net
fly.to/ChiAlpha

# split name into it's 3 letter day name and the extension
# each part will go in $1 & $2 by default :
$mon =~ /^(\w{3})(\.DOC)/;

# save parts in appropiately named variables :
($day, $ext) = ($1, $2);

# the following code will run the 'date' command and print the output to STDOUT
# however, the return value of the sub 'system' is the exit value of the 'date'
# command execution, which is usually 0 for success, therefore $date would be
# equal to 0 (zero) :
# $date = system ("date \'+%m%d%Y\'");

# what you want to do instead is run the 'date' command with backticks instead
# of 'system'.
# this way, the output of 'date' is not printed to STDOUT, but rather returned
# and stored into $date.
# chomp is necessary to remove the newline character :
chomp($date = `date '+%m%d%Y'`);

# To get the current date. If I want $mon to change to MON_02082001.DOC, what do i do next???

$mon = $day . '_' . $date . $ext;
print $mon;

# the output should be as follows :
# MON_02082001.DOC