in reply to Coolest way to decode YYYYMMDD?

Why all the contortions? Keep it simple and talk to your database: 

$ echo "select to_char(to_date('19830501?','YYYYMMDD'), 'FMMon FMdd, y
+yyy?')" \
  | perl -MDBI -ne '
      print DBI->connect("dbi:Pg:")->selectall_arrayref($_)->[0]->[0],
+ "\n";
   ';
May 1, 1983?

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;-)

P.S. (Looks I am the first one to spot the terminal question mark in your example? Does that get me Mega-XP too?)

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Re^2: Coolest way to decode YYYYMMDD?
by hdb (Monsignor) on Jun 03, 2013 at 16:56 UTC

    If DateTime is not a requirement, and short month names are ok (difficult to say with "May" as the only example), then I offer this: 

    printf('"%s %d,%d?"',substr(gmtime(34e6*('19830501'=~/(....)(..)(..)/)
+[1]),4,3),$3,$1);

    [download]
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[d/l]
[select]
Re^2: Coolest way to decode YYYYMMDD?
by Your Mother (Archbishop) on Jun 03, 2013 at 13:48 UTC

    The question mark is ambiguous in this context but it's proper English style see below. Liked your direct approach. :P

[reply]
      it's proper English style.

      Actually... No, it's not. While there is some (little) conflict over when/whether periods & commas should go inside, all authorities agree that "question marks and exclamation points follow [i.e. go outside] closing quotation marks unless they belong within the quoted matter." (Chicago Manual)

      I reckon we are the only monastery ever to have a dungeon stuffed with 16,000 zombies.
[reply]

        While I will take issue with Chicago being il capo di tutti authorities, I will take the correction to season the crow of my mistakenly conflating commas and periods with question marks and bangs.

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