Previously working tcsh script that use date command returns a fatal error on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4

Issue

• Starting with tcsh-6.14-14.el5, the following csh code causes a fatal error:  "@: Badly formed number"

        @ i = `date +%j`

• `date +%j` returns the day of the year, with leading zeroes, which has never been a problem until the tcsh-6.14-14.
• This is code and other similar working with months, 2 digits years, hours, minutes or seconds may be embedded in many scripts from a 3rd party vendor.