This is often called Broken-down time and is used in a C structure called struct tm. Perl is written in C, so it is not surprising that it uses it.
Neither is Perl alone in that, many other languages use this format.
I guess Larry used it because everyone would expect that format and is familiar with it.

In reply to Re: Why does localtime() return $YEAR-1900? by cdarke
in thread Why does localtime() return $YEAR-1900? by szabgab

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