text_combined: chris charley charleypulsenetcom original message michael wang newsgroups perlbeginners sent wednesday august 06 2008 900 subject date info hi something like xxxx20080503 get date year ago xxxx20070503 perl thanks michael many date modules cpan datecalc datetime name two may overkill simple task need solve prevent errors case concerning leap years xxxx20080229 xxxx20070229 wrong heres example using datetime module correctly account leap years usrbinperl use strict use warnings use datetime str xxxx20080229 str d4dddd date datetimenew year 2 month 3 day 4 print 1 dateymd n datesubtract years 1 print 1 dateymd n __end__ prints xxxx20080229 xxxx20070228 chris unsubscribe email beginnersunsubscribeperlorg additional commands email beginnershelpperlorg httplearnperlorg wed 06 aug 2008 143749 0400 date info