use strict;
use Win32::API;

my $GetSystemTime = new Win32::API('kernel32', 'GetSystemTime', 'P', '
+V');
#you can also use GetLocalTime

my $lpSystemtime = pack('S8',0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0);

$GetSystemTime->Call($lpSystemtime);

my ($wYear,$wMonth,$wDayOfWeek,$wDay,$wHour,$wMinute,$wSecond,$wMillis
+econds) = unpack('S8', $lpSystemtime);

print "Actual time is: $wHour:$wMinute:$wSecond\n";

$wHour++;
$wMinute++;
$wSecond++;

$lpSystemtime = pack('S8',$wYear,$wMonth,$wDayOfWeek,$wDay,$wHour,$wMi
+nute,$wSecond,$wMilliseconds);

my $SetSystemTime = new Win32::API('kernel32', 'SetSystemTime', 'P', '
+I');
#you can also use SetLocalTime

if ($SetSystemTime->Call($lpSystemtime)) {

    print "The new time is correctly setted: $wHour:$wMinute:$wSecond\
+n"

} else {

    print "Error setting the time\n"
}
[download]

Difficult to answer authoratatively without knowing more context as to why you want to set the machines time from within a program but this will do it.

WARNING! Be very, very sure that $time has a valid value for a time before doing this!!

For instance. Using a value of "ab:cd" for $time in the following snippet, or even from the command line (under NT4 sp6a) will result in the time being set to 00:00:00!!!

The unix types are gonna have a field day with that one!

...
# $time = the time you want to set as "12:45" or "00:00:01"
# derived or verified using system calls or modules as
# appropriate
system( "cmd /c time $time" );
...
[download]

Why do you preprend cmd /c when Perl will call the shell to handle a system SCALAR call anyway?

Makeshifts last the longest.

Because I read this from perldoc:perlfunc:

• If there is only one scalar argument, the argument is checked for shell metacharacters, and if there are any, the entire argument is passed to the system's command shell for parsing (this is /bin/sh -c on Unix platforms, but varies on other platforms). If there are no shell metacharacters in the argument, it is split into words and passed directly to execvp, which is more efficient.

Which, as I know time is a CMD built-in, implied to me that as there are no shell meta characters involved, would mean that I would need to force the use of CMD explicitly.

I have just tried it without and it works fine so I guess ActiveState have never updated the documentation to reflect the difference on the Win32 platform.

Thanks for pointing it out. Another peice of 'cargo cult' programming, if I understand the term correctly, bites the dust :^)