Time::Piece makes it fairly easy, but you would have to benchmark it against other solutions to see what works for you. How much data are you dealing with? 
use Time::Piece;
use strict;
use warnings;
my $date = '20070301103000';

my $start = Time::Piece->strptime($date, "%Y%m%d%H%M%S")->epoch;
print $start, "\n";

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In reply to Re^3: Sorting Puzzle by imp
in thread Sorting Puzzle by willfould

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