How do I use Perl's localtime with print to get the timestamp?

Question

I have used the following statements to get the current time.

  print \"$query executed successfully at \",localtime;
  print \"$query executed successfully          


        

Answer 1

scalar forces scalar context:

print scalar localtime ();

In the second example, it's clearly a list context so you're just getting a printout of the numbers in a row. For example, try

 print join (":", (localtime));

and you'll see the numbers joined with a colon.