Along the same lines, you could do something to the effect of

Update: After reading sulfericacid's response, I tested my algo. The issue was a typo ( popped up with use strict;), and I wasn't calling int. New code below.

#!/usr/bin/perl
# tested and verified

use strict;

my $then = time() - (86400 * 3);

my $min_s   = 60;
my $hour_s  = $min_s * 60;
my $day_s   = $hour_s * 24;
my $elapsed = time() - $then;

my $output;

my $days  = int( $elapsed / $day_s );
$elapsed -= $days * $day_s;
$output   = "$days days " if $days;

my $hours = int ( $elapsed / $hour_s );
$elapsed -= $hours * $hour_s;
$output  .= "$hours hours " if $hours;

my $mins  = int ( $elapsed / $min_s );
$elapsed -= $mins * $min_s;
$output .= "$mins minutes " if $mins;

$output .= "$elapsed seconds" if $elapsed;

# so on and so forth;
print "$output ago\n";
[download]