If you call localtime in list context, it returns an array; what you want are the fourth through sixth elements of that array. A really terse way to nab these three parts is with the following (which uses an array slice): 

my ($day, $month, $year) = (localtime)[3..5];

[download]

The first element of the resulting array (the fourth element returned by localtime is the day, the second is the month (numbered from 0-11) and the third is the number of years since 1900. 

$year +=1900;
my $datestr = join "-", ++$month, $day, $year;

[download]

That will get you most of the way (neither month, nor day is guaranteed to be two digits, but there are lots of ways to 'pad' out the strings.)

You can also get a nice timestamp by calling localtime in a scalar context, which can be forced using the scalar operator (e.g. my $timestamp = scalar localtime;.)

All this and more is documented in the localtime manpage ...

Philosophy can be made out of anything. Or less -- Jerry A. Fodor

In reply to Re: Date format by arturo
in thread Date format by Anonymous Monk

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.