regex - Removing delimiters from a date/time string -

i want take this

code: 2010-12-21 20:00:00 

and make this:

code: 20101221200000 

this last thing tried

code: #!/usr/bin/perl  -w use strict; ($teststring) = '2010-12-21 20:00:00'; $result =  " "; print "$teststring\n"; $teststring =~ "/(d\{4\})(d\{3\})(d\{3\})(d\{3\})(d\{3\})(d\{3\})/$result";         {      print "$_\n";     print "$result\n";         print "$teststring\n";     } 

and produced this:

code: nathan@debian:~/desktop$ ./ptest 2010-12-21 20:00:00 use of uninitialized value $_ in concatenation (.) or string @ ./ptest line 8.   2010-12-21 20:00:00 nathan@debian:~/desktop$ 

-thanks

first, here problem code:

$teststring =~ "/(d\{4\})(d\{3\})(d\{3\})(d\{3\})(d\{3\})(d\{3\})/$result"; 

you want use =~ substitution operator s///. is, right hand side should not plain string, s/pattern/replacement/.

in pattern part, \d denote digit. however, \d includes sorts characters in unicode digit class, safer use character class [0-9] if that's want match against. [0-9]{4} mean match characters 0 through 9 4 times. note should not escape curly brackets { , }.

the parentheses ( , ) define capture groups. in replacement part, want keep stuff captured, , ignore stuff did not.

in addition, assuming these timestamps occur in other input, , not want accidentally replace stuff did not mean (by blindly removing non-digits).

below, use /x modifier s/// operator can format pattern more using white-space.

#!/usr/bin/perl  use strict; use warnings;  while ( <data> ) {     s{         ^         ([0-9]{4})-         ([0-9]{2})-         ([0-9]{2})[ ]         ([0-9]{2}):         ([0-9]{2}):         ([0-9]{2})     }{$1$2$3$4$5$6}x;     print; }  __data__ code: 2010-12-21 20:00:00 

or, using named capture groups introduced in 5.10 can make whole thing more readable:

#!/usr/bin/perl  use 5.010;  while ( <data> ) {     s{         ^         ( ?<year>  [0-9]{4} ) -         ( ?<month> [0-9]{2} ) -         ( ?<day>   [0-9]{2} ) [ ]         ( ?<hour>  [0-9]{2} ) :         ( ?<min>   [0-9]{2} ) :         ( ?<sec>   [0-9]{2} )     }     {         local $";         "@+{qw(year month day hour min sec)}"     }ex;     print; }  __data__ code: 2010-12-21 20:00:00