I, too, had this question a while back. Some time passed, I forgot what I was told, and I had the same question all over again. I felt foolish trying to manipulate strings when someone had already solved in the problem 20 or more years ago (in C/Unix, at least).

I think the meta-problem is that I routinely forget that for a common problem, someone else has already solved it and probably published the solution. This is true even more so in something as stable, mature, and widespread as Perl 5.

If there is a change I need to incorporate into my coding behavior, it is to be able to recognize a common problem before wrassling with it too long and simply lookup the answer instead.

Some helpful links:

In reply to Re: Timestamp Format Help! by jffry
in thread Timestamp Format Help! 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.