in reply to time string parsing question

Shorter is not always better... But you can always do

my ( $minute, $time ) = ( $string =~ /^\d+:(\d+).*?,(\d+:\d+:\d+)/ )
BTW, I think the above is consistent with what you posted, though it makes no sense to me that $minute does not come from the same substring as $time.

the lowliest monk