3.1.1. Problem

3.1.2. Solution

($DAY, $MONTH, $YEAR) = (localtime)[3,4,5];

or use Time::localtime, which overrides localtime to return a Time::tm object:

use Time::localtime;
$tm = localtime;
($DAY, $MONTH, $YEAR) = ($tm->mday, $tm->mon, $tm->year);

3.1.3. Discussion

Here's how you'd print the current date as "YYYY MM DD", using the non-overridden localtime:

($day, $month, $year) = (localtime)[3,4,5];
printf("The current date is %04d %02d %02d\n", $year+1900, $month+1, $day);
The current date is 2003 03 06

To extract the fields we want from the list returned by localtime, we take a list slice. We could also have written it as:

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

This is how we'd print the current date as "YYYY-MM-DD" (in approved ISO 8601 fashion), using Time::localtime:

use Time::localtime;
$tm = localtime;
printf("The current date is %04d-%02d-%02d\n", $tm->year+1900, 
    ($tm->mon)+1, $tm->mday);
The current date is 2003-03-06

The object interface might look out of place in a short program. However, when you do a lot of work with the distinct values, accessing them by name makes code much easier to understand.

A more obfuscated way that does not involve temporary variables is:

printf("The current date is %04d-%02d-%02d\n",
       sub {($_[5]+1900, $_[4]+1, $_[3])}->(localtime));

3.1.4. See Also