breaking a string into chunks

Hi, all -- Now it's my turn to ask a simple question, or one that sure sounds like it should be... I have a 14-char date string like "20030917181909" and I need to break it into its component parts for a more readable "2003-09-17 18:19:09" view. How can I do that? Do I really need to call substr half a dozen times?(!?) I tried unpack() but all I ended up getting was an array with one entry (sometimes with a very strange-looking key). TIA & HAND :-D -- David T-G * There is too much animal courage in (play) davidtg@justpickone.org * society and not sufficient moral courage. (work) davidtgwork@justpickone.org -- Mary Baker Eddy, "Science and Health" http://justpickone.org/davidtg/ Shpx gur Pbzzhavpngvbaf Qrprapl Npg!