1Date::Parse(3)        User Contributed Perl Documentation       Date::Parse(3)
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NAME

6       Date::Parse - Parse date strings into time values
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SYNOPSIS

9               use Date::Parse;
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11               $time = str2time($date);
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13               ($ss,$mm,$hh,$day,$month,$year,$zone) = strptime($date);
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DESCRIPTION

16       "Date::Parse" provides two routines for parsing date strings into time
17       values.
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19       str2time(DATE [, ZONE])
20           "str2time" parses "DATE" and returns a unix time value, or undef
21           upon failure.  "ZONE", if given, specifies the timezone to assume
22           when parsing if the date string does not specify a timezome.
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24       strptime(DATE [, ZONE])
25           "strptime" takes the same arguments as str2time but returns an
26           array of values "($ss,$mm,$hh,$day,$month,$year,$zone)". Elements
27           are only defined if they could be extracted from the date string.
28           The $zone element is the timezone offset in seconds from GMT. An
29           empty array is returned upon failure.
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MULTI-LANGUAGE SUPPORT

32       Date::Parse is capable of parsing dates in several languages, these are
33       English, French, German and Italian.
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35               $lang = Date::Language->new('German');
36               $lang->str2time("25 Jun 1996 21:09:55 +0100");
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EXAMPLE DATES

39       Below is a sample list of dates that are known to be parsable with
40       Date::Parse
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42        1995:01:24T09:08:17.1823213           ISO-8601
43        1995-01-24T09:08:17.1823213
44        Wed, 16 Jun 94 07:29:35 CST           Comma and day name are optional
45        Thu, 13 Oct 94 10:13:13 -0700
46        Wed, 9 Nov 1994 09:50:32 -0500 (EST)  Text in ()'s will be ignored.
47        21 dec 17:05                          Will be parsed in the current time zone
48        21-dec 17:05
49        21/dec 17:05
50        21/dec/93 17:05
51        1999 10:02:18 "GMT"
52        16 Nov 94 22:28:20 PST
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LIMITATION

55       Date::Parse uses Time::Local internally, so is limited to only parsing
56       dates which result in valid values for Time::Local::timelocal
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BUGS

59       When both the month and the date are specified in the date as numbers
60       they are always parsed assuming that the month number comes before the
61       date. This is the usual format used in American dates.
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63       The reason why it is like this and not dynamic is that it must be
64       deterministic. Several people have suggested using the current locale,
65       but this will not work as the date being parsed may not be in the for‐
66       mat of the current locale.
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68       My plans to address this, which will be in a future release, is to
69       allow the programmer to state what order they want these values parsed
70       in.
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AUTHOR

73       Graham Barr <gbarr@pobox.com>
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76       Copyright (c) 1995 Graham Barr. All rights reserved. This program is
77       free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same
78       terms as Perl itself.
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82perl v5.8.8                       2003-06-02                    Date::Parse(3)
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