You really should be using strict, and using a module like Time::Piece or DateTime to do your date/time handling.

Anyway, when you print your values, do you see how you've got a space before the month name? That's why the eq isn't matching it. The reason is the \s inside the first capture group; try writing $time =~ /\s([A-Z][a-z]+)/; instead.

When I print stuff during debugging, I use Data::Dumper, Data::Dump, or at least do something like print "($value)\n"; to catch whitespace issues like these. See also Basic debugging checklist.

You really should be using strict

Why?

Re: Programming Jobs, use strict or do not pass go

I figured it would probably be something simple...thanks a mil. I considered everything except the whitrspace!

And that would be the most awesome reply eva

The $month value('Mar'} seems to vanish within the if statement and only in the if statement. What's going on here?

If you want to figure it out your existing program use Basic debugging checklist

Otherwise see split, http://perldoc.perl.org/perlintro.html#Parentheses-for-capturing and http://perldoc.perl.org/perlrequick.html#Extracting-matches

#!/usr/bin/perl --
use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dump qw/ dd /;
my $now = localtime;
dd( $now );
my( $weekday, $month, $monthday, $time, $year ) = split ' ', $now;
dd( ( $weekday, $month, $monthday, $time, $year )  );
__END__
"Mon Mar  9 20:38:38 2015"
("Mon", "Mar", 9, "20:38:38", 2015)
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I hope this is not too late to be useful -- even on topics beyond the scope of the original question.

#!/usr/bin/perl
use 5.018;
use strict;     # NOT because it makes a difference here, but because 
+it will 
                # (OFTEN!) point out typos and other mistakes
use warnings;
# 1119420


(my $time) = scalar localtime();    
say "\t DEBUG \$time: |$time|";    # the vbars in the printout will he
+lp you spot 
                                   # mismatches between your expectati
+ons & 
                                   # the actual regex captures
$time =~ /\s([A-Z]{3})/i;          # you don't want to capture the pre
+ceding space; the other 
my $month = $1;                    # changes are merely for laziness (
+compactness) and 
say "\t DEBUG \$month: |$month|";  # rely on the fact that all localti
+me() months 
                                   # are just 3 chars

$time =~ /\s(\d+)\s/;
my $day = $1;

say "\t DEBUG \$day: |$day|";

say "\t ", $month, " " ,$day;      # when printing to console, I find 
+output with
                                   # leading tabs makes the output mor
+e legible. YMMV.
if ( $month eq 'Mar' ){            # reformatting makes (again, YMMV) 
+the reading easier.
    print "\t true\n";
} else {
    print "\t false\n";}

if ( $day =~ m{\d+} ) {            # regex instead of == to accomodate
+ days_of_month 10
    say "\t true";                 #  thru 31 but, would, of course ac
+cept "47" as a 
} else {                           # day_of_month so would be a baaad 
+idea for some 
                                   # origins of day_of_month.
    say "\t false";
}
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Update: fixed typo  s/<c><#!.../<c>#!..../ in markup

use Modern::Perl qw /2014/;
my ( $day, $mon ) = ( localtime(time) )[ 3, 4 ];
my @months = qw/Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec/;
say "$months[$mon] $day";
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