perl - Find the first day of the month a given date is in -

in perl, given variable $period_end_date being set to, say, '4/30/2014', how can set $period_start_date '4/1/2014' , $next_period_start_date '5/1/2014'? (i.e. set first of month , first of next month respectively.

i've tried using datetime module system not find it. thinking use substr extract pieces month , day can have 1 or 2 digits.

how change what's in between /'s 1?

if know input data in format mm/dd/yyyy, , you're worried fact mm , dd can have either 1 or 2 digits, can use regex matching:

$period_end_date =~ m{(\d+)/(\d+)/(\d+)}; $month = $1; $day   = $2; $year  = $3; 

i used m{} format pattern matching rather // in order avoid having escape / characters within date. write pattern /(\d+)\/(\d+)\/(\d+)/ instead.