# perldoc > Email::Date::Format

## NAME
    [Email::Date::Format](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Email%3A%3ADate%3A%3AFormat/markdown) - produce RFC 2822 date strings

## VERSION
    version 1.008

## SYNOPSIS
      use [Email::Date::Format](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Email%3A%3ADate%3A%3AFormat/markdown) qw(email_date);

      my $header = email_date($date->epoch);

      [Email::Simple](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Email%3A%3ASimple/markdown)->create(
        header => [
          Date => $header,
        ],
        body => '...',
      );

## DESCRIPTION
    This module provides a simple means for generating an RFC 2822 compliant datetime string. (In
    case you care, they're not RFC 822 dates, because they use a four digit year, which is not
    allowed in RFC 822.)

## PERL VERSION
    This library should run on perls released even a long time ago. It should work on any version of
    perl released in the last five years.

    Although it may work on older versions of perl, no guarantee is made that the minimum required
    version will not be increased. The version may be increased for any reason, and there is no
    promise that patches will be accepted to lower the minimum required perl.

## FUNCTIONS
  email_date
      my $date = email_date; # now
      my $date = email_date( time - 60*60 ); # one hour ago

    "email_date" accepts an epoch value, such as the one returned by "time". It returns a string
    representing the date and time of the input, as specified in RFC 2822. If no input value is
    provided, the current value of "time" is used.

    "email_date" is exported only if requested.

  email_gmdate
      my $date = email_gmdate;

    "email_gmdate" is identical to "email_date", but it will return a string indicating the time in
    Greenwich Mean Time, rather than local time.

    "email_gmdate" is exported only if requested.

## AUTHORS
    *   Casey West

    *   Ricardo SIGNES <<cpan@semiotic.systems>>

## CONTRIBUTORS
    *   <bitcardbmw@lsmod.de> <<bitcardbmw@lsmod.de>>

    *   Eric Sproul <<esproul@omniti.com>>

    *   Ricardo Signes <<rjbs@semiotic.systems>>

## COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
    This software is copyright (c) 2004 by Casey West.

    This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl
    5 programming language system itself.