in reply to Capturing Date/Time

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/(\w{3}) (\d+), (\d{4})(?: (\d+):(\d\d) )?/

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(?: ... ) are non-capturing parentheses, so they don't muck up your dollar-digit captures.

Have you considered using split instead of a regexp? In this case it leads to much easier code to maintain

my @date_parts = split m{[\s:,]+}, $date_string;
if ( @date_parts == 6 ) {
  # date + time
} elsif ( @date_parts == 3 ) {
  # date only
} else {
  die "invalid date/time combo";
}

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update: added split alternative

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Re^2: Capturing Date/Time
by logie17 (Friar) on Aug 16, 2007 at 21:29 UTC
    I like FunkyMonk's solution, but here's another: 
    if ($time =~ /^\w{3}\s\d{2}\,\s\d{4}(\s\d{2}:\d{2}\s\w{2})?/){
    print "Found it\n";
}

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    I'm new to regex too, but I thought I'd give a crack at it too.
    Cheers!
    s;;5776?12321=10609$d=9409:12100$xx;;s;(\d*);push @_,$1;eg;map{print chr(sqrt($_))."\n"} @_;
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Re^2: Capturing Date/Time
by Nkuvu (Priest) on Aug 16, 2007 at 21:08 UTC

    Don't personally like the split alternative as much. Neither approach here really do much to verify the data, but the regex is at least a bit more strict. So the regex fails to match for a string like "foo bar, baz" but the split passes it along as a valid date.

    Obviously if verification of valid dates is required to prevent something like "Feb 99, 0000" for instance, then a module of some sort would probably be the best approach. (Although I can't suggest a particular module off the top of my head)

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      Validation of the data was not one of my goals, as per the OP. If it had been, I'd have used one of the (far too1) many date modules available.
      1 A personal beef of mine. Don't worry about it.

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