Okay this original sub was taken from blootbot, and I needed it to format the strings better and worked it into this:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
open UPTIME, "/proc/uptime" or die "cannot open '/proc/uptime'.\n";

my $time = <UPTIME>;
close UPTIME;
$time = sprintf "%.0f", $time =~ /^(\d+)\./;
print time2string($time), "\n";

sub time2string {
    my $time = shift;

    return if ! defined $time or $time !~ /^\-?\d+$/;

    my $prefix;
    if ($time < 0) {
    $time = - $time;
    $prefix = "- ";
    }

    my $s = $time % 60;
    my $m = ($time / 60) % 60;
    my $h = ($time / (60 * 60)) % 24;
    my $d = int($time / (24 * 60 * 60));
 
    (my $y, $d)  = modulus_thingamajig(365, $d);
    (my $mo, $d) = modulus_thingamajig(30, $d);
    (my $w, $d)  = modulus_thingamajig(7, $d);

    my @data;
    push @data, sprintf "\002%d\002y", $y if $y != 0;
    push @data, sprintf "\002%d\002mo", $mo if $mo != 0;
    push @data, sprintf "\002%d\002w", $w if $w != 0;
    push @data, sprintf "\002%d\002d", $d if $d != 0;
    push @data, sprintf "\002%d\002h", $h if $h != 0;
    push @data, sprintf "\002%d\002m", $m if $m != 0;
    push @data, sprintf "\002%d\002s", $s if $s != 0 or ! @data;

    return $prefix . join ' ', @data;
}

sub modulus_thingamajig {
    my ($days, $d) = @_;
    my $return;
    if ($d >= $days) {
    $return = int($d / $days);
    $d = $d % $days;
    } else {
    $return = 0;
    }

    return ($return, $d);
}
[download]

Any suggestions/tips on how it might be improved would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

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