Brute force over elegance

use strict;
use warnings;
my @tests=('For the fiscal year ended December 31, 2015',
           'For the fiscal year ending December 31, 2015',
           'For the fiscal year ending December 31, 2015'); 

for my $line (@tests) { 
 my ($date)=$line=~/\s+(January|Febuary|March|April|May|June|July|Augu
+st|September|October|November|December\s+\d+,\s+\d+)/; 
  print $date."\n"; 
 }
[download]

edit: added \s+ before capture group

that could work. Will that concept fit in place of line 77 in the code below?

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict; use warnings; 

my $base_url = 'http://www.sec.gov/Archives';

#Assign variable to file with URLs;
my $urls = 'c:/my documents/research/sec filings/10K and 10Q/data/urls
+/sizefiles1.txt';
#my $urls = 'g:/research/SEC filings 10K and 10Q/data/urls';

#open text file with URLs, read URLs into array;
open (FH, "<$urls") or die "can't open $urls: $!";
my @aonly = <FH>;          
       
#close text file with URLs;
close FH or die "Cannot closee $urls: $!";
     
 #Display array contents/elements;
 
     print "@aonly\n";
 
#initialize file counter;
my $file_count=0;

my $FH_OUT = "c:/my documents/research/sec filings/Data2016_fiscal_yea
+r.txt";
#"g:/research/SEC filings 10K and 10Q/data/header data/Data2016_fiscal
+_year.txt";

my @fields = qw / cik form_type report_date file_date name fiscal_year
+_ended /; 

foreach my $filetoget(@aonly)   {
     my $res = get_process_trunc ($filetoget);
     if (scalar(keys(%$res)))   {
    my $lineout='';
    for my $field (@fields)   {
        if ($res->{$field})    {$lineout.=$res->{$field} };
        $lineout.='|';
             
                                  }  #close for my $field loop;
                open (OUTPUT, '>>', $FH_OUT) or die "Couldn't open $!"
+;
        print OUTPUT $lineout."\n";
        print "$lineout.\n"; 
     }  #close if scalar(keys ... )  loop;
     $file_count++;print "$file_count\n";
     }  #close foreach my $filetoget loop;   
close(OUTPUT);
exit;

sub get_process_trunc {    
# http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=1183107
  my $filetoget=shift; 
  my $fullfile="$base_url/$filetoget";
  my $res={}; 

  use LWP::UserAgent;

  my $received_size = 0;
  my $partial = 0;
  my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new;
  my $response = $ua->get($fullfile
                         , ':content_cb'=> sub { 
                               my ($data, $response, $protocol) = @_;
                               $partial.=$data; 
                               $received_size += length $data;        
+              
                               die if ($received_size>10000); #10000;
                               # die inside this callback interrupt th
+e request, not the program!!
                               } 
                         );
  if ($partial) {
#      print 'length:'.length($partial)."\n";
      my $line_count=0; 
      for my $line (split qr/\'\n'/, $partial) { 
        if($line=~m/^\s*CENTRAL\s*INDEX\s*KEY:\s*(\d*)/m)             
+{$res->{cik}        =$1;}
        if($line=~m/^\s*FORM\s*TYPE:\s*(.*$)/m)                       
+{$res->{form_type}  =$1;}
        if($line=~m/^\s*CONFORMED\s*PERIOD\s*OF\s*REPORT:\s*(\d*)/m)  
+{$res->{report_date}=$1;}
        if($line=~m/^\s*FILED\s*AS\s*OF\s*DATE:\s*(\d*)/m)            
+{$res->{file_date}  =$1;}
        if($line=~m/^\s*COMPANY\s*CONFORMED\s*NAME:\s*(.*$)/m)        
+{$res->{name}       =$1;}
        if($line=~m/\s*For\s*the\s*fiscal\s*year\s*end(.*)/i)        {
+$res->{fiscal_year_ended} =$1;}
        $line_count++;
        last if ($line_count>50); #50;
        } 
      } # success 
  return $res;  

  } # close get_process_trunc loop;
[download]

guess it would work like so:

if($line=~m/\s+(January|Febuary|March|April|May|June|July|August|Septe
+mber|October|November|December\s+\d+,\s+\d+)/i)        {$res->{fiscal
+_year_ended} =$1;}
[download]

Now what happens when the date has some ASCII characters, like: December  30, 2015 I really appreciate your help!!

7 Mar 2017 Athanasius added code tags to display the