in reply to extracting numbers from a string

Have a look at perldoc perlre.

#!/usr/bin/perl my($filename)="11-22-2001012004"; my($x,$z,$y,$m,$d,$h)= ($filename=~/(\d\d)-(\d\d)-(\d\d\d\d)(\d\d)(\d\d)(\d\d)/); printf "[%s] [%s] [%s] [%s] [%s] [%s]\n", $x,$z,$y,$m,$d,$h;

Produces:

[11] [22] [2001] [01] [20] [04]