Time stamping a process in a log file

[jason corbett]

i want to use the sub routine to time stamp processes and such whenever 
i need to. So, I wrote this below to call the routine into a variable 
$process_date. Is there a better way to read the date into a variable 
and use it?

Thanks,

JC
sub dateme{
  $process_date=system('return date');

}return;