my $data ="2008-Jan-01 00:00:00 UTC (GMT +0000) - Toll: channel = seven, ref = xxx.xxxxxx.xxx.xxxxx.xxxxxxx, tids = 123456789";


print "\n---->Variation 1 (Cumbersome coding to be explicit)\n\n";

# split just once, on " - " (space hyphen space) for the data given
my ($datetime, $therest) = split /\s-\s/, $data;

my ($toss1away,$channel,$therest2) = split /=\s(.*?),(.*)/, $therest; 

# capture anything between "= " and the next comma
my ($toss2away,$ref,$tids_uncleaned) = split /=\s(.*?),/, $therest2; 

my ($toss3away,$tids) = split /=\s(.*)/, $tids_uncleaned; 

print "DT: " . $datetime . "\nChannel: " . $channel . "\nref: " . $ref . "\ntids: " . $tids . "\n";



print "\n---->Variation 2 (Merely splits the data withOUT removing unneeded descriptors)\n\n";

my ($datetime,$channel,$ref,$tids) = split /\s-\s|,\s/, $data;   # split on , 

print "DT: " . $datetime . "\nChannel: " . $channel . "\nref: " . $ref . "\ntids: " . $tids . "\n";

print "\n---->Variation 3 (Provides a header, removes descriptors from data.\n\tCould easily be revised to push each set of multi-line data to an AoA.)\n\n";

my $header=<<HEADER;
DATETIME\t\t\t\tChannel\tRef\t\t\t\ttids
==============================================================================================
HEADER

print $header;

# now, get rid of "Toll: channel = " (so output is just "seven"), etc

my ($throwaway,$cleanchannel) = split /\s=\s(.*)/, $channel;
($throwaway,my $cleanref)  = split /\s=\s(.*)/, $ref; 
($throwaway,my $cleantids) = split /\s=\s(.*)/, $tids;

print "$datetime\t$cleanchannel\t$cleanref\t$cleantids\n";