_DATE_ function in archive

[Alex Neuman]

IANAPP (in fact, I have *zero* knowledge of Perl), but...

 From "message.pm" I see a few lines that say the following:

  $date = sprintf("%04d%02d%02d", $year+1900, $month+1, $day);

and

  if ($archiveplaces =~ /_DATE_/) {
    # Only do the work for the date substitution if we really have to
    $archiveplaces =~ s/_DATE_/$date/g;
    #print STDERR "Archive location is $archiveplaces\n";
  }

Could I add something like:

$shortdate = sprintf("%04d%02d%02d", $year+1900, $month+1);

  if ($archiveplaces =~ /_SHORTDATE_/) {
    # Only do the work for the short date substitution if we really have to
    $archiveplaces =~ s/_DATE_/$shortdate/g;
    #print STDERR "Archive location is $archiveplaces\n";
  }

... so I could use year+month instead of year+month+date and then 
rotate/backup my archive once a month if I used the magic string 
_SHORTDATE_ instead of _DATE_ ?

Thanks in advance...