in reply to time string parsing question

Since the data / time is obviously fixed-length, there's no need for a two-step process or regex.
my $string = '01:01:2000,14:01:12,1.584167'; my $min = substr($string, 14, 2); print $min;
Or if you really MUST use split:
my $string = '01:01:2000,14:01:12,1.584167'; my $min = (split /:/, (split /,/, $string)[1])[1]; print $min;