What the heck. Another approach: 

>perl -wMstrict -le
"my @dates = (
   'December 1st 2012',    'December 2nd 2012',
   'December 23rd 2012',   'December 24th 2012',
   'December 765th 2012',  'an 8th note',
   );
 ;;
 for my $date (@dates) {
   printf qq{'$date' -> };
   $date =~ s{ \d \K  (?: st | nd | rd | th) \b }{}xms;
   print qq{'$date'}
   }
"
'December 1st 2012' -> 'December 1 2012'
'December 2nd 2012' -> 'December 2 2012'
'December 23rd 2012' -> 'December 23 2012'
'December 24th 2012' -> 'December 24 2012'
'December 765th 2012' -> 'December 765 2012'
'an 8th note' -> 'an 8 note'

[download]

In reply to Re: String manipulation by AnomalousMonk
in thread String manipulation by Anonymous Monk

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.