Nice regex V you can write this as well: 

$line = "On January 1 1970 the unix epoch commenced.";
my @months = qw(
                January
                Jan
                February
                Feb
                March
                Mar
                April
                Apr
                May
                June
                Jun
                July
                Jul
                August
                Aug
                September
                Sept
                Sep
                October
                Oct
                November
                Nov
                December
                Dec
                );
my $months = join "|", @months;
my ($month, $day, $year) = $line =~ m/($months)\s+(\d+)\s+(\d+)/i;
print "month\t$month\nday \t$day\nyear\t$year\n";

[download]

Logic is as explained by V. I have built up the month alternation from a list of months and abreviations stored in the array @months and joined with the | to allow interpolation into the regex . I have made the regex case insensitive with the /i switch. Note he used the /x switch to allow the informative comments in his regex. This also works and captures full or abbreviated months, case insensitive by allowing any sting of chars after the first theee which identify the month: 

$line = "On January 1 1970 the unix epoch commenced.";
my @months = qw(
                Jan
                Feb
                Mar
                Apr
                May
                Jun
                Jul
                Aug
                Sep
                Oct
                Nov
                Dec
                );
my $months = join "|", @months;
my ($month, $day, $year) = $line =~ m/((?:$months)\w+)\s+(\d+)\s+(\d+)
+/i;
print "month\t$month\nday \t$day\nyear\t$year\n";

[download]

cheers

tachyon

In reply to Re: Pulling Date out of String by tachyon
in thread Pulling Date out of String by GreatWhite

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