An alternative

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use Date::Format;

$ENV{'TZ'} = 'America/New_York';

my $today = time2str( "%m-%d-%Y \@ %H:%M:%S", time);

# I am trying to format the result like this = 09-30-2010 @ 21:45:06

print "Today: $today\n";
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