I fully agree with you. There is also another package we can use for this purpose, but less natural than your suggestion:

use HTTP::Date qw(parse_date);

my ($year, $month, $day, $hour, $$minute, $second, $timezone) = parse_
+date("11-12-2002");
print "year = $year\n";
print "month = $month\n";
print "day = $day\n";
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