Wow, all great answers and a big help. I can hardly wait to get started. Thanks responsive monks!
Update:
It worked as shown below. Good stuff and sorely missing from the literature. Maybe this would make a good Q&A (now an unapproved
question, under subroutines).
#!/usr/bin/perl
print "Content-type: text/plain\n\n";
use strict;
use CGI::Carp qw(fatalsToBrowser);
use Validate;
my $the_time = "12:23 pm";
Validate::val_time($the_time);
$the_time = $Validate::val;
if ($the_time) { print "$the_time\n" } else { print "error\n" }
And the module:
package Validate; # use package to declare a module
our $val;
sub val_time {
$val = shift;
$val = ($val =~ /^(\d{2}):(\d{2}) (am|pm)$/) ? "$1:$2 $3" : 1;
return $val; #worked with and without this line
}
1;
Thanks!