You're actually not too far away. This would work with your example:

my ($date) = ($VAR1 =~ /([A-z]* [0-9]*.[0-9]*:[0-9]*:[0-9]*)/);
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But using [A-z] and the * quantifier is not a very good idea, because it makes a rather weak regex and you may end up capturing things that you don't want.

This might already be significantly better:

my ($date) = ($VAR1 =~ /(^\w+ \d+ \d+:\d+:\d+)/);
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