Messing with dates today. 
Input: a file name
ft-v05.2007-10-22.204501-0400use Date::Parse;
$file =~ /(....-..-..).(..)(..)(..)(.....)/;
$date="$1 $2:$3:$4 $5";
$timeStamp = str2time($date);
Gets us the epoch-based time that this file represents. Of course the interesting thing here is that the time represents the start of the time period, not the end, so if we treat this as the "end" mark of the data flows represented within, we are moving some data into the past and artificially compressing some of it.
Also by default the flow capture files are fifteen minutes long, not five as rrdtool will want.
So I now can import large swaths of data into my postgres database.