With all of your suggestions on my intro Perl class assignment (see that OP here), I have come up with the following code...it is a blend of code, pseudocode, and otherwise - this is only a skeleton (and the regexes are purely off the top of my head, but they remind me what each has to do).

I decided to do the month conversions all in one hash, rather than do conversions in 2 or more steps (i.e. why 8, 08, and aug are all in one hash.) Since there weren't that many choices the table didn't get too large in this case.

So all I'm writing about is to see if I'm on the right track, get opinions, suggestions, constructive criticism, or whatever. (bearing in mind it's a skeleton)(also bearing in mind that at this stage I will tend to write things out more explicitly, rather than as tersely as they could be).

Thanks in advance! 
#!usr/bin/perl
#Script to parse dates such as the following:
#Apr 8 1984, Apr 08 84, 4/8/84, 04/08/84, 08 Apr 1984

use warnings;
use strict;

#declare my vars and make sure they're empty
my $MM = $DD = $YY = $YYYY = ();
#take in date at command line and make text lowercase
chomp (my $date = <>);
$date = lc ($date);

 
#parse Apr 8 1984
if ($date =~ /^\[a-zA-Z]{3}\s\d\s\d{4}$/){
split $date and assign each part to $MM $DD and $YYYY;
output ($MM, $DD, $YYYY);

#parse Apr 08 84
} elsif ($date =~ /^\[a-zA-Z]{3}\s\d{2}\s\d{2}$/) {
split $date and assign each part to $MM $DD and $YY;
convert $YY to 4 digits and assign to $YYYY;
output ($MM, $DD, $YYYY);

#parse 4/8/84
} elsif ($date =~ /^\d\/\d\/\d{2}$/) {
split $date and assign each part to $MM $DD and $YY;
convert $YY to 4 digits and assign to $YYYY;
output ($MM, $DD, $YYYY);

#parse 04/08/84
} elsif ($date =~ /^\d{2}\/\d{2}\/\d{2}$/) {
split $date and assign each part to $MM $DD and $YY;
convert $YY to 4 digits and assign to $YYYY;
output ($MM, $DD, $YYYY);

#parse 08 Apr 1984
} elsif ($date =~ /^\d{2}\s\[a-zA-Z]{3}\s\d{4}$/) {
split $date and assign each part to $MM $DD and $YYYY;
output ($MM, $DD, $YYYY);

#contingency plan
} else {
print "your date is not of a recognizable format...good day.\n";
}




sub output {
#take in $MM $DD $YYYY with @_, parse $MM with %months
#and print "fullmonth day, year" to STDOUT

my %months = (
jan => January
feb => February
mar => March
apr => April
may => MAY
jun => June
jul => July
aug => August
sep => September
oct => October
nov => November
dec => December
1 => January
2 => February
3 => March
4 => April
5 => MAY
6 => June
7 => July
8 => August
9 => September
10 => October
11 => November
12 => December
01 => January
02 => February
03 => March
04 => April
05 => MAY
06 => June
07 => July
08 => August
09 => September)

print "$MM's{value} $DD's{value}, $YYYY's{value}\n";
}

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In reply to More Date Conversion Happiness, Part 2 by ctp

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