Date within a string manipulation.

batcater98 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Greetings - I have a simple input string and I am wanting to pull out the date from it and leave the rest behind. Knowing that the lenght of the actual date portion will change weather it has a 2 digit month or a 1 digit month, and same goes for the day. I am trying to figure out a way to pull from the reverse of the string because the end of it never changes.

Date Examples:
3/1/2006 0:00:00
7/22/2007 0:00:00
12/1/2006 0:00:00
12/22/2007 0:00:00
[download]

I want to pull just the 3/1/2006 out and trash the 0:00:00. Key the 0:00:00 is always the same. With that how do I strip the string from the back side to the front?

Comment on Date within a string manipulation. Download Code

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Re: Date within a string manipulation. by FunkyMonk (Bishop) on Jul 24, 2007 at 19:39 UTC
There's plenty of ways of doing this. Just take your pick from one below: `$_ = "3/1/2006 0:00:00"; s/ .//; $_ = (split)[0]; $_ = $1 if m/(.) /; ($_) = m/(.*) /; s/ 0:00:00//;` [download] And many, many more...	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Date within a string manipulation. by BrowserUk (Patriarch) on Jul 24, 2007 at 19:59 UTC
If you know the bit you want to remove is a constant length, just chop that bit off: `print substr '3/1/2006 0:00:00', 0, -8;; 3/1/2006` [download] Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error. "Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority". In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice. "Too many [] have been sedated by an oppressive environment of political correctness and risk aversion."	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Date within a string manipulation. by mr_mischief (Monsignor) on Jul 24, 2007 at 19:44 UTC
`$string =~ s/\s[0:]+$//;` ...or am I misunderstanding your intent?	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Date within a string manipulation. by andreas1234567 (Vicar) on Jul 25, 2007 at 06:07 UTC
Use a module such as DateTime, Date::Manip, Date::Parse: `use strict; use warnings; use DateTime::Format::Strptime; my $parser = DateTime::Format::Strptime->new( pattern => '%m/%d/%Y' ); while (<DATA>) { my $dt = $parser->parse_datetime( $_ ); print $dt->ymd(); } __DATA__ 3/1/2006 0:00:00 7/22/2007 0:00:00 12/1/2006 0:00:00 12/22/2007 0:00:00` [download] `perl -l 628560.pl 2006-03-01 2007-07-22 2006-12-01 2007-12-22` [download] -- Andreas	[reply] [d/l] [select]