Your need sprintf not printf. This works as expected. The 1 is the true return value from printf which gets assigned to $ymd after printf has printed the string.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
my ($sec,$min,$hour,$mday,$mon,$year,$wday,$yday,$isdst) = localtime(t
+ime);

printf ("%04d%02d%02d",$year+1900,$mon+1,$mday);
print "\n\n";
# result is 20010807
# good; exactly what was expected

my $ymd = sprintf("%04d%02d%02d",$year+1900,$mon+1,$mday);
print "$ymd";
print "\n\n";
# result is 20010807

my $outfile = "$ymd.summary";
print "$outfile";
print "\n\n";
# result is 20010807.summary

[download]

You can simplify and use the default behaviour for localtime and an array slice to give this:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
my ($mday,$mon,$year) = (localtime)[3..5];

my $ymd = sprintf("%04d%02d%02d",$year+1900,$mon+1,$mday);
my $outfile = "$ymd.summary";
print $outfile, "\n";
[download]

cheers

tachyon

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