#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

my $string= "Wednesday, May 20, 2009 2:09 PM";

my ($day, $year) = (my @tokens = split(/[,\s]+/,$string))[0,3];

print "@tokens \n";
print "day =$day  year =$year\n";
__END__
PRINTS:
Wednesday May 20 2009 2:09 PM 
day =Wednesday  year =2009