#try these and see under un*x
my $s='%Y';
print "date $s", $/;
print 'date $s', $/;
print `date $s`, $/;
print system("date $s"), $/;
##
## Thus [vroom]'s code should be
##

$webpage=`lynx -source http://blah.com`;  #gets html source of document
$webpage=`lynx -dump http://blah.com`;    #returns output as formatted text