1Time::Tiny(3) User Contributed Perl Documentation Time::Tiny(3)
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6 Time::Tiny - A time object, with as little code as possible
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9 version 1.08
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12 # Create a time manually
13 $christmas = Time::Tiny->new(
14 hour => 10,
15 minute => 45,
16 second => 0,
17 );
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19 # Show the current time
20 $now = Time::Tiny->now;
21 print "Hour : " . $now->hour . "\n";
22 print "Minute : " . $now->minute . "\n";
23 print "Second : " . $now->second . "\n";
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26 Time::Tiny is a member of the DateTime::Tiny suite of time modules.
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28 It implements an extremely lightweight object that represents a time,
29 without any time data.
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31 The Tiny Mandate
32 Many CPAN modules which provide the best implementation of a concept
33 can be very large. For some reason, this generally seems to be about 3
34 megabyte of ram usage to load the module.
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36 For a lot of the situations in which these large and comprehensive
37 implementations exist, some people will only need a small fraction of
38 the functionality, or only need this functionality in an ancillary
39 role.
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41 The aim of the Tiny modules is to implement an alternative to the large
42 module that implements a subset of the functionality, using as little
43 code as possible.
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45 Typically, this means a module that implements between 50% and 80% of
46 the features of the larger module, but using only 100 kilobytes of
47 code, which is about 1/30th of the larger module.
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49 The Concept of Tiny Date and Time
50 Due to the inherent complexity, Date and Time is intrinsically very
51 difficult to implement properly.
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53 The arguably only module to implement it completely correct is
54 DateTime. However, to implement it properly DateTime is quite slow and
55 requires 3-4 megabytes of memory to load.
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57 The challenge in implementing a Tiny equivalent to DateTime is to do so
58 without making the functionality critically flawed, and to carefully
59 select the subset of functionality to implement.
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61 If you look at where the main complexity and cost exists, you will find
62 that it is relatively cheap to represent a date or time as an object,
63 but much much more expensive to modify or convert the object.
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65 As a result, Time::Tiny provides the functionality required to
66 represent a date as an object, to stringify the date and to parse it
67 back in, but does not allow you to modify the dates.
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69 The purpose of this is to allow for date object representations in
70 situations like log parsing and fast real-time work.
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72 The problem with this is that having no ability to modify date limits
73 the usefulness greatly.
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75 To make up for this, if you have DateTime installed, any Time::Tiny
76 module can be inflated into the equivalent DateTime as needed, loading
77 DateTime on the fly if necessary.
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79 For the purposes of date/time logic, all Time::Tiny objects exist in
80 the "C" locale, and the "floating" time zone (although obviously in a
81 pure date context, the time zone largely doesn't matter).
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83 When converting up to full DateTime objects, these locale and time zone
84 settings will be applied (although an ability is provided to override
85 this).
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87 In addition, the implementation is strictly correct and is intended to
88 be very easily to sub-class for specific purposes of your own.
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91 In general, the intent is that the API be as close as possible to the
92 API for DateTime. Except, of course, that this module implements less
93 of it.
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96 new
97 # Create a Time::Tiny object for midnight
98 my $midnight = Time::Tiny->new(
99 hour => 0,
100 minute => 0,
101 second => 0,
102 );
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104 The "new" constructor creates a new Time::Tiny object.
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106 It takes three named parameters. "hour" should be the hour of the day
107 (0-23), "minute" should be the minute of the hour (0-59), and "second"
108 should be the second of the minute (0-59).
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110 These are the only parameters accepted.
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112 Returns a new Time::Tiny object.
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114 now
115 my $current_time = Time::Tiny->now;
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117 The "now" method creates a new date object for the current time.
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119 The time created will be based on localtime, despite the fact that the
120 time is created in the floating time zone.
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122 This means that the time created by "now" is somewhat lossy, but since
123 the primary purpose of Time::Tiny is for small transient time objects,
124 and not for use in calculations and comparisons, this is considered
125 acceptable for now.
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127 Returns a new Time::Tiny object.
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129 hour
130 The "hour" accessor returns the hour component of the time as an
131 integer from zero to twenty-three (0-23) in line with 24-hour time.
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133 minute
134 The "minute" accessor returns the minute component of the time as an
135 integer from zero to fifty-nine (0-59).
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137 second
138 The "second" accessor returns the second component of the time as an
139 integer from zero to fifty-nine (0-59).
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141 from_string
142 The "from_string" method creates a new Time::Tiny object from a string.
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144 The string is expected to be an "hh:mm:ss" type ISO 8601 time string.
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146 my $almost_midnight = Time::Tiny->from_string( '23:59:59' );
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148 Returns a new Time::Tiny object, or throws an exception on error.
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150 as_string
151 The "as_string" method converts the time object to an ISO 8601 time
152 string, with separators (see example in "from_string").
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154 Returns a string.
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156 DateTime
157 The "DateTime" method is used to create a DateTime object that is
158 equivalent to the Time::Tiny object, for use in conversions and
159 calculations.
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161 As mentioned earlier, the object will be set to the 'C' locate, and the
162 'floating' time zone.
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164 If installed, the DateTime module will be loaded automatically.
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166 Returns a DateTime object, or throws an exception if DateTime is not
167 installed on the current host.
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170 This module was written by Adam Kennedy in 2006. In 2016, David Golden
171 adopted it as a caretaker maintainer.
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174 DateTime, DateTime::Tiny, Time::Tiny, Config::Tiny, ali.as
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177 Bugs / Feature Requests
178 Please report any bugs or feature requests through the issue tracker at
179 <https://github.com/dagolden/Time-Tiny/issues>. You will be notified
180 automatically of any progress on your issue.
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182 Source Code
183 This is open source software. The code repository is available for
184 public review and contribution under the terms of the license.
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186 <https://github.com/dagolden/Time-Tiny>
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188 git clone https://github.com/dagolden/Time-Tiny.git
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191 · Adam Kennedy <adamk@cpan.org>
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193 · David Golden <dagolden@cpan.org>
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196 Tim Heaney <oylenshpeegul@gmail.com>
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199 This software is copyright (c) 2006 by Adam Kennedy.
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201 This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
202 the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.
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206perl v5.28.1 2018-04-22 Time::Tiny(3)