ppp has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I have a string like this : 
Address: 100.64.52.98 Time Fri Jan 16 21:44:35 2015 End

[download]

How to extract "21:44:35" from it ?

my try is 
  my ($a1, $a2, $a3, $a4, $a5, $a6, $a7, $a8,$a9, $a10,$a11) =  split 
+//, $line;

[download]

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: How to get an integer substring between two strings
by Athanasius (Archbishop) on Jan 17, 2015 at 08:14 UTC

    Hello ppp,

    Splitting on the empty pattern, //, gives you every character separately. You want to split on whitespace, for example /\s+/. Update: Or use " " (a single space literal string) instead of a regular expression. See split, the paragraph beginning “As another special case, split emulates the default behavior of the command line tool awk...”

    Note: if you know that the field you want is always the seventh in the line, you can get it directly, without declaring all those unused variables:

    18:09 >perl -wE "my $line = 'Address: 100.64.52.97 Time Fri Jan 16 21:
+44:35 2015 End'; say +(split /\s+/, $line)[6];"
21:44:35

18:11 >

    [download]

    Hope that helps,

    Athanasius <°(((>< contra mundum Iustus alius egestas vitae, eros Piratica,

[reply]
[d/l]
[select]
Re: How to get an integer sub string between two string
by Corion (Patriarch) on Jan 17, 2015 at 08:05 UTC

    What do you see as problematic with your current approach?

    Maybe you want to use a regular expression instead?

    $line =~ /\b(\d\d:\d\d:\d\d)\b/
    or die "No time in '$line'";
my $time= $1;

    [download]
[reply]
[d/l]
Re: How to get an integer sub string between two string
by Anonymous Monk on Jan 17, 2015 at 08:09 UTC 
    # Address: 100.64.52.98 Time Fri Jan 16 21:44:35 2015 End 
# ........ ............ .... ... ... .. ..:..:.. .... ... 
# Address: ............ Time ... ... .. ..:..:.. .... ... 

         my( $stuff,           $fri, $jan, $day, $hour, $min, $sec, $y
+ear, $end )
= 
m{Address: (............) Time (...) (...) (..) (..):(..):(..) (....) 
+(...)}ms;

    [download]
[reply]
[d/l]
      This will not work when the IP address (or any other field) might have a different length...
      Compare 1.2.3.4 with 111.222.111.222 for example.
[reply]
        If data isn't fixed length use \S+, perlrequick, its for ppp :)
[reply]

Back to Seekers of Perl Wisdom