Re^2: My code seems messy...

[PerlGrrl]

My text files include dates in string fromat such as the following:
...the next social club meeting is on April 15, 1994...

...September 21-23, 1994 we will be hosting visitors...

...submissions should be made by 11 February 1994...

...Mail sent 7 Feb 1994...

...On the 16th September 1994 Mr X will be giving a talk on ...

...unconfirmed conference dates are March 4, 5 and 6, 1994...

(...is MY emphasis - for clarity's sake)
Have absolutely no knowledge of surrounding boundaries, nor where the strings can occur in the text, just got to pull them all out, so that I can then do some date normalisation...also, i've found that some of my strings are sometimes matching numeric strings...

[wfsp]

Here's my attempt. I've used two regexes for the general cases of day month and month day.

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

while (<DATA>){
  if ( # month day
    /
      (
        [JFMASOND][a-z]{2,8} # full or 3 letter month name
        \s
        [123]?\d             # day number
        (?:-[123]?\d)?       # optional dash and day number
        (?:,\s[123]?\d\s)*   # optional list of day numbers
        (?:and\s)?           # optional and
        (?:[123]?\d,?\s)?    # optional end of list
        (?:19|20)\d{2}       # year starting 19 or 20
      )
    /x
  )
  {
    print "1: $1\n";
  }
  elsif ( # day month
    /
      (
        [123]?\d                # day number
        (?:st|nd|rd|th)?        # optional st, nd etc.
        \s+
        [JFMASOND][a-z]{2,8}    # month name
        \s+                     
        (?:19|20)\d{2}          # year starting 19 or 20
      )
    /x
  )
  {
    print "2: $1\n";
  }
}
__DATA__
...the next social club meeting is on April 15, 1994...
...September 21-23, 1994 we will be hosting visitors...
...submissions should be made by 11 February 1994...
...Mail sent 7 Feb 1994...
...On the 16th September 1994 Mr X will be giving a talk on ...
...unconfirmed conference dates are March 4, 5 and 6, 1994...

output:

---------- Capture Output ----------
> "C:\Perl\bin\perl.exe" _new.pl
1: April 15, 1994
1: September 21-23, 1994
2: 11 February 1994
2: 7 Feb 1994
2: 16th September 1994
1: March 4, 5 and 6, 1994

> Terminated with exit code 0.

[Miguel]

Here I start by checking if there's a valid month name in the string. If there is, I start extracting the dates from the string; else skipt that line.
Note that I had to add a space after the first '...' because '...September' is not a valid month name.
Updated to return valid dates

#!/usr/bin/perl
# filename: extract_dates.pl

use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dumper;
$Data::Dumper::Indent = 1;

my @dates;
push @dates, findMonth($_) while (<DATA>); 
print Dumper \@dates; # or do something else with your dates

sub findMonth {

    my @words = split / /,shift;

    my %months = map {$_ => 1 } qw/
        january jan february feb march     mar
        april   apr may      may june      jun
        july    jul august   aug september sep
        october oct november nov december  dec
    /;

    foreach (@words) {
        if (exists $months{lc($_)} ) {
            return extractDate(
                {
                    MONTH  => $_,
                    STRING => "@words"
                }
            );
            last;
        }
    }

    return;

}

sub extractDate {

    my $self = shift;

    return makeValidDate(
        {STRING=>$self->{STRING},DATE=>$1}
    ) if ($self->{STRING} =~ 
        /
        (
            (?:
                (
                    [123]?\d
                    (st|nd|rd|th)?
                    \s+
                )?
                $self->{MONTH}
                \s\d{1,4}
                (
                    (-[123]?\d)?
                    (,\s[123]?\d\s)*
                    (and\s\d+)?
                    (,\s\d{4})?
                )?
            )
        )
        /x
    );
    
    return;

}

sub makeValidDate {

    my $self = shift;
    my ($string) = $self->{STRING} =~/^(.+)$/;

    $self->{DATE} =~s/-/X/g;
    $self->{DATE} =~s/(^-|\W|and|th|st|nd|rd)/ /gi;
    
    my @date = split /\s+/,$self->{DATE};
    my $date = {};

    foreach (@date) {

        if ($_=~/^\d{1,2}$/) {
            push @{$date->{days}},$_
        } elsif ($_=~/^\d{4}$/) {
            $date->{year} = $_
        } elsif ($_=~/(\d+)X(\d+)/) {
            push @{$date->{days}},$1 .. $2
        } else {
            $date->{month} = lc($_)
        }

    }

    use Date::Manip;
    my $out_date = {};
    
    foreach (@{$date->{days}}) {

        my $temp_date = ParseDate(
            $_ . " "
            . $date->{month} . " "
            . $date->{year}
        );

        $temp_date = &UnixDate($temp_date,"%D");
        push @{$out_date->{dates}},$temp_date;
        $out_date->{string} = $string;
    }

    return $out_date;

}

__DATA__
... the next social club meeting is on April 15, 1994...
... September 21-23, 1994 we will be hosting visitors...
... submissions should be made by 11 February 1994...
... Mail sent 7 Feb 1994...
... On the 16th September 1994 Mr X will be giving a talk on ...
... unconfirmed conference dates are March 4, 5 and 6, 1994...

$VAR1 = [
  {
    'dates' => [
      '04/15/94'
    ],
    'string' => '... the next social club meeting is on April 15, 1994
+...'
  },
  {
    'dates' => [
      '09/21/94',
      '09/22/94',
      '09/23/94'
    ],
    'string' => '... September 21-23, 1994 we will be hosting visitors
+...'
  },
  {
    'dates' => [
      '02/11/94'
    ],
    'string' => '... submissions should be made by 11 February 1994...
+'
  },
  {
    'dates' => [
      '02/07/94'
    ],
    'string' => '... Mail sent 7 Feb 1994...'
  },
  {
    'dates' => [
      '09/16/94'
    ],
    'string' => '... On the 16th September 1994 Mr X will be giving a 
+talk on ...'
  },
  {
    'dates' => [
      '03/04/94',
      '03/05/94',
      '03/06/94'
    ],
    'string' => '... unconfirmed conference dates are March 4, 5 and 6
+, 1994...'
  }
];