phpman > perldoc > Date::Parse(3pm)

NAME
    Date::Parse - Parse date strings into time values

SYNOPSIS
            use Date::Parse;

            $time = str2time($date);

            ($ss,$mm,$hh,$day,$month,$year,$zone) = strptime($date);

DESCRIPTION
    "Date::Parse" provides two routines for parsing date strings into time values.

    str2time(DATE [, ZONE])
        "str2time" parses "DATE" and returns a unix time value, or undef upon failure. "ZONE", if
        given, specifies the timezone to assume when parsing if the date string does not specify a
        timezone.

    strptime(DATE [, ZONE])
        "strptime" takes the same arguments as str2time but returns an array of values
        "($ss,$mm,$hh,$day,$month,$year,$zone,$century)". Elements are only defined if they could be
        extracted from the date string. The $zone element is the timezone offset in seconds from
        GMT. An empty array is returned upon failure.

MULTI-LANGUAGE SUPPORT
    Date::Parse is capable of parsing dates in several languages, these include English, French,
    German and Italian.

            $lang = Date::Language->new('German');
            $lang->str2time("25 Jun 1996 21:09:55 +0100");

EXAMPLE DATES
    Below is a sample list of dates that are known to be parsable with Date::Parse

     1995:01:24T09:08:17.1823213           ISO-8601
     1995-01-24T09:08:17.1823213
     Wed, 16 Jun 94 07:29:35 CST           Comma and day name are optional
     Thu, 13 Oct 94 10:13:13 -0700
     Wed, 9 Nov 1994 09:50:32 -0500 (EST)  Text in ()'s will be ignored.
     21 dec 17:05                          Will be parsed in the current time zone
     21-dec 17:05
     21/dec 17:05
     21/dec/93 17:05
     1999 10:02:18 "GMT"
     16 Nov 94 22:28:20 PST

LIMITATION
    Date::Parse uses Time::Local internally, so is limited to only parsing dates which result in
    valid values for Time::Local::timelocal. This generally means dates between 1901-12-17 00:00:00
    GMT and 2038-01-16 23:59:59 GMT

BUGS
    When both the month and the date are specified in the date as numbers they are always parsed
    assuming that the month number comes before the date. This is the usual format used in American
    dates.

    The reason why it is like this and not dynamic is that it must be deterministic. Several people
    have suggested using the current locale, but this will not work as the date being parsed may not
    be in the format of the current locale.

    My plans to address this, which will be in a future release, is to allow the programmer to state
    what order they want these values parsed in.

AUTHOR
    Graham Barr <gbarr AT pobox.com>

COPYRIGHT
    Copyright (c) 1995-2009 Graham Barr. This program is free software; you can redistribute it
    and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.