use strict;
my $str = 'It was a fine day. September 1, 2018 and I had a lot of laughs August 2, 2017 and then again on August 23, 2017';
my $regex = qr/(january|february|march|april|may|june|july|august|september|octorber|november|december) ([1-9]|[1-2]\d|3[01]), \d{4}/ip;
if ( $str =~ /$regex/g ) {
print "Whole match is ${^MATCH} and its start/end positions can be obtained via \$-[0] and \$+[0]\n";
# print "Capture Group 1 is $1 and its start/end positions can be obtained via \$-[1] and \$+[1]\n";
# print "Capture Group 2 is $2 ... and so on\n";
}
# ${^POSTMATCH} and ${^PREMATCH} are also available with the use of '/p'
# Named capture groups can be called via $+{name}
Please keep in mind that these code samples are automatically generated and are not guaranteed to work. If you find any syntax errors, feel free to submit a bug report. For a full regex reference for Perl, please visit: http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html