Wondering if you can use regex in a hash?

This will work:

my %HASH;
$HASH{'/^jan/i'} = '01';
# etc.
$HASH{'/^dec/i'} = '12';

foreach my $key (keys %HASH)
{
  print "$key: $HASH{$key}\n" if eval('"March" =~ ' . $key);
}

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What does "keys" do exactly?

It returns the keys of the hash, in this case, '/^jan/i'

#I'm not sure what you're expecting  $hash{ '/(jan[*]/' } = '01'; to do
#are you trying to do something lilke
@hash{qw(jan feb mar apr may jun jul aug sep oct nov dec)}=('01'..'12');
$_='January February';
$re=qr/(@{[join'|',keys %hash]})\w*/i;
s/$re/$hash{lc $1}/g;
print;

I'm sorry but this seriously sounds foreign to me...let me break down what I "think" I understand and perhaps you all can fill in the blanks...

My GOAL is to create a hash that I can put something like $_ = Jan; or $_ = January; into and get back a '01' ...because I have a serious of lines with inconsistant naming conventions...(Jan, Janu, January etc.) So tdlewis, you're saying that I initialize the hash (my %HASH;) create a matching statement and take in results ($HASH{'/^jan/i'} = '01';)

This is the part that mistifys me:
foreach my $key (keys %HASH)
{
  print "$key: $HASH{$key}\n" if eval('"March" =~ ' . $key);

So to my understanding a "key" is the value that I passed to the hash (like Jan)
so, in the case of "jan" and "01" [$HASH{$key}] would return a '01' and $key would return 'Jan" right?

http:#26121420 appears to fulfill your stated goal

Your code is totally not working for me ozo I've tried it in as many ways as I can imagine and it simply will not produce anything close to what I want:


Given a folder with the following file names:
July_20_2004_Friendship_Berkeley_BMP_side_2.mp3
June_03_2004_Marriage_Vallejo_Side_1.mp3
March_04_1999_Marriage_Vallejo_side_1.mp3
March_04_1999_Marriage_Vallejo_side_2.mp3
March_16_2004_Repentence_restoration_dress_code_Berkeley_Side_1.mp3
May_15_2001_Gossip_Baton_Rouge_Side_1.mp3
May_15_2001_Gossip_Baton_Rouge_Side_2.mp3
Oct_21_1993_The_Spirit_of_disobedience_Berkeley_Side_1.mp3
Oct_21_1993_The_Spirit_of_disobedience_Berkeley_Side_2.mp3
Sept_07_2004_I_Peter_Our_Hope_UC_side_1.mp3
Sept_07_2004_I_Peter_Our_Hope_UC_side_2.mp3
Sept_09_1993_Second_Coming_Berkeley_Side_1.mp3

I want to take the month from the name of the track (Oct) and assign it to a variable, then plug that variable into the hash and change the month to a number (10).

I will be using the month number later on in the code so I need it to be assigned to a variable

while (<.mp3>) {

$names = $_;

@hash{qw(jan feb march apr may june july aug sept oct nov dec)}=('01'..'12');
$_='January February';
$re=qr/(@{[join'|',keys %hash]})\w*/i;
s/$re/$hash{lc $1}/g;
print;

}

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Try this:

my %MON = ('jan' => '01', 'feb' => '02', 'mar' => '03',
           'apr' => '04', 'may' => '05', 'jun' => '06',
           'jul' => '07', 'aug' => '08', 'sep' => '09',
           'oct' => '10', 'nov' => '11', 'dec' => '12');

while (<.mp3>) {
  my $mon = $MON{lc(substr($_,0,3))};
  print "$mon $_\n";
}

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@hash{qw(jan feb march apr may june july aug sept oct nov dec)}=('01'..'12');
$re=qr/(@{[join'|',keys %hash]})\w*/;
for( <*.mp3> ){
my $f=$_;
  s/$re/$hash{lc $1}/g;
   rename $f,$_ or warn '$_ $!;
}

...