What is switches supposed to contain beyond the particular group of numbers it should split upon? Anyhow, this will be messy:

#!/usr/bin/perl -wl
use Data::Dumper
sub get_split {
  my $filename = shift;
  my $switches = shift;

  my %filesplit;

  my @digits = $filename =~ /(\d+)/g or die "Error: Could not extract 
+a number from filename '$filename'.\n";
  $filesplit{digit} = $digits[$switches->{numindex}];

  # how many $filesplit{digit} can we find before this sucker?
  my $splits = 2 + grep($_ eq $filesplit{digit},@digits[0..$switches->
+{numindex}-1]);
  my @temp = split (/$filesplit{digit}/, $filename, $splits);
  $filesplit{suffix} = pop(@temp);
  $filesplit{prefix} = join $filesplit{digit}, @temp;

  return \%filesplit;
}

print Dumper(get_split("01-file01.html",{numindex=>1}));
print Dumper(get_split("01-file01and01.html",{numindex=>1}));
print Dumper(get_split("02-file01tom34bill01.html",{numindex=>3}));
__DATA__
$VAR1 = {
          'digit' => '01',
          'suffix' => '.html',
          'prefix' => '01-file'
        };

$VAR1 = {
          'digit' => '01',
          'suffix' => 'and01.html',
          'prefix' => '01-file'
        };

$VAR1 = {
          'digit' => '01',
          'suffix' => '.html',
          'prefix' => '02-file01tom34bill'
        };
[download]

That is some ugly code. Hope this helps.

antirice    
The first rule of Perl club is - use Perl
The ith rule of Perl club is - follow rule i - 1 for i > 1