Moritz has the answer to your question.

I have some concerns about your approach.

The formats you list, 

 min:sec,frac  e.g. "5:29,11"
 sec,frac      e.g. "29,11"
 sec           e.g. "29"
 ,frac         e.g. ",11"
 min:sec       e.g. "5:29"
 someth. else  e.g. "abc"

[download]

are not normalized. In consequence, you provide no coverage of possibilities such as 5:29,3, which appears to be at least theoretically possible in your schema. Were you to begin by normalizing the data to mm:ss,frac, writing a reliable conversion to seconds would be both more reliable and easier (and which is left as an exercise for the user).

That said, and accepting the un-normalized data, suhailck's solution has much to commend it, but also has a couple glitches:

  1. Its initial test of the string won't correctly handle mixed alphanumerics, such as 1abc
  2. Its use of $3/10**2 in calculation of the decimal portion fails to consider the possiobility (again, not in your schema, but, ISTM, distinctly possible) of a single-digit, decimal fraction, such as .3 or a decimal fraction where length > 2, as, for example, .303

So, in part TIMTOWTDI, and in part, perhaps by way of improvement:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
# 855222

# 1) min:sec,frac  e.g. "5:29,11"
# 2) sec,frac      e.g. "29,11"
# 3) sec           e.g. "29"
# 4) ,frac         e.g. ",11"
# 5) min:sec       e.g. "5:29"
# 6) someth. else  e.g. "abc"

my $seconds;

my @times=("5:29,11", "29,11", "29:00", "29:00,3", "29:00,303","29:13,
+07", ",11", "0:11", "5:29", "abc", "1abc");

for my $time(@times) {
    no warnings 'uninitialized';
    if ($time =~ /[a-z]/i) {    # won't catch non-"time-ish" symbols s
+uch as ?, #, @, etc
    # $seconds = -1;    # my personal preference is for an explicit er
+ror statement 
    print "Data not recognized: $time\n";
    next;
    } else { 
    ($seconds = $time) =~ s<^(?:(\d+):)?(\d+)?(?:,(\d+))?$><$1*60+$2+$
+3/(10**length($3))>e;
}

print "$time = $seconds  \n";
}

[download]

which produces:

5:29,11 = 329.11
29,11 = 29.11
29:00 = 1740
29:00,3 = 1740.3
29:00,303 = 1740.303
29:13,07 = 1753.07
,11 = 0.11
0:11 = 11
5:29 = 329
Data not recognized: abc
Data not recognized: 1abc

[download]

In reply to Re: Convert time string to seconds by ww
in thread Convert time string to seconds by Dirk80

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