Parsing dates - Any papers/books?

hi allan,

i suppose you want to extract these dates from files containing text in natural language.
parsing natural language is, however, a rather complicated thing to do. but if you can
narrow your date formats down to a few dozen, it should be possible to utilize
the lex/yacc pair of utilities used to construct compilers for computer languages.
lex and yacc are unix tools and documentation is widely available. give it a try.

if you need more, you should consider using a grammar used for natural language
processing. unfortunately, i cannot point you to any information in this area.

patrick

Dear Patrick,
     Thanks for replying. I know lex/yacc. But it's the
intellectual effort of working out a BNF (formal grammar)
that can pick out dates from text, that's really what I'm
looking for. Failing that some papers discussing the subject
would come in useful.
     Yours
     Allan