@month = split //, $DOB[0];
$digits_month = @month;

[download]
What a convoluted way to say 
$digits_month = length $DOB[0];

[download]
There's many more albeit small examples of pretzel logic in that piece of code. A first cleanup yields 
my $bday = "8/16/97";
my $firstname = "Benjamin";
my $lastname = "Biederman";

my ($month, $day, $year) = split /\//, $bday;

my $formatted_bday = '';

if (length($month) == 1) {
    $formatted_bday = "0";
}
$formatted_bday .= $month;

if (length($day) == 1) {
    $formatted_bday .= "0";
}
$formatted_bday .= $day;
    
my $login_name =
    lc substr $firstname, 0, 1;
    . lc substr $lastname, 0, 1;
    . $formatted_bday;

[download]

Of course that's still far too elaborate. Builtin functions to do such formatting already exist. Assume that Perl has what you need when you're trying to solve such trivial problems.

You're also well advised to read Mark-Jason Dominus' excellent Program Repair Shop and Red Flags article series on Perl.com.

Makeshifts last the longest.

In reply to Re: Convert split to regex by Aristotle
in thread Convert split to regex by 3dbc

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.