Is there a way to convert an array to a (parameter-)list?

I often find myself doing things like:

   year,mon,day,hour,minute = ParseDate.parse(datestring)
   printf("%04d-%02d-%02d %02d:%02d\n",year,mon,day,hour,minute)

while it would be a lot nicer to do:

   printf("%04d-%02d-%02d %02d:%02d\n", ParseDate.parse(datestring)

It is of course perfectly possible to redefine printf and make it check 
whether it is offered an array or a parameter list, but it would be a lot 
easier when ruby did so automatically. 

Alternatively, there could be something like Array#flatten which flattens
an array to a list.

-- 
Wybo