Date::Manip::Holidays(3)				User Contributed Perl Documentation				  Date::Manip::Holidays(3)

NAME

       Date::Manip::Holidays - describes holidays and events

SYNOPSIS

       This describes the Holidays and Events sections of the config file, and how they are used.

       Holidays and events are specific days that are named. Holidays are used in business mode calculations, events are not. Events may be used
       for other calendaring operations.

HOLIDAYS

       The holiday section of the config file is used to define holidays.  Each line is of the form:

	  STRING = HOLIDAY

       HOLIDAY is the name of the holiday (or it can be blank in which case the day will still be treated as a holiday... for example the day
       after Thanksgiving is often a work holiday though it is not named).

       STRING is a string which can be parsed to give a valid date. It can be any of the following forms:

       A full date
	   Specific holidays can be set which occur only a single time.

	      May 5, 2000		      = A one-time-only holiday

	   Any format parseable by Date::Manip::Date::parse_date can be used.

       A date without a year
	   Some holidays occur every year on the same day. These can be defined using the simple lines:

	      Jan 1			      = New Year's Day
	      Jul 4th			      = Independence Day
	      fourth Thu in Nov 	      = Thanksgiving

	   These dates must be written in a form which can be parsed as a full date by simply adding the year to the end of the string. Please
	   refer to the Date::Manip::Date documentation to see what forms will work. ISO 8601 dates will not work since the year comes first.

	   Any format parseable by Date::Manip::Date::parse_date can be used.

       Recurrence
	   The dates can be specified using recurrences:

	      1*0:0:0:0:0:0*EASTER	      = Easter
	      1*11:0:11:0:0:0*CWD	      = Veteran's Day

	   In cases where you are interested in business type calculations, you'll want to define most holidays using recurrences, since they can
	   define when a holiday is celebrated in the financial world.	For example, Christmas might be defined as:

	      Dec 25		   = Christmas

	   but if it falls on a weekend, there won't be a business holiday associated with it. It could be defined using a recurrence:

	      1*12:0:24:0:0:0*DWD  = Christmas

	   so that if Christmas falls on a weekend, a holiday will be taken on the Friday before or the Monday after the weekend.

	   You can use the fully specified format of a recurrence:

	     1*2:0:1:0:0:0***Jan 1 1999*Dec 31 2002 = Feb 2 from 1999-2002

OTHER HOLIDAY CONSIDERATIONS

       Recurrences which change years
	   It is now valid to have a recurrence defined for New Year's day which pushes the holiday to the previous year.

	   For example, the most useful definition of New Year's day is:

	      1*1:0:1:0:0:0*DWD 	      = New Year's Day

	   which means to choose the closest working day to observe the holiday, even though this might mean that the holiday is observed on the
	   previous year.

       Order of definitions is preserved
	   The order of the definitions is preserved. In other words, when looking at the holidays for a year, previously defined holidays (in the
	   order given in the config file) are correctly handled.

	   As an example, if you wanted to define both Christmas and Boxing days (Boxing is the day after Christmas, and is celebrated in some
	   parts of the world), you could do it in one of the following ways:

	      1*12:0:24:0:0:0*FW1  = Christmas
	      1*12:0:25:0:0:0*FW1  = Boxing

	      1*12:0:24:0:0:0*FW1   = Christmas
	      1*12:0:25:0:0:0*FW1,a = Boxing

	      1*12:0:24:0:0:0*FW1  = Christmas
	      1*12:0:24:0:0:0*FW1  = Boxing

	   The following examples will NOT work:

	      1*12:0:24:0:0:0*FW1  = Christmas
	      1*12:0:24:0:0:0*FW2  = Boxing

	   The reasoning behind all this is as follows:

	   Holidays go into affect the minute they are parsed.	So, in the case of:

	      1*12:0:24:0:0:0*FW1  = Christmas
	      1*12:0:24:0:0:0*FW2  = Boxing

	   the minute the first line is parsed, Christmas is defined as a holiday.  The second line then steps forward 2 work days (skipping
	   Christmas since that's no longer a work day) and define the work day two week days after Christmas, NOT the day after Christmas.

	   NOTE that since the definitions are stored in a list, NOT a hash (as they were in Date::Manip 5.xx), you can use the definition:

	      1*12:0:24:0:0:0*FW1  = Christmas
	      1*12:0:24:0:0:0*FW1  = Boxing

	   to defined the days.

EVENTS

       The Events section of the config file is similar to the Holiday section.  It is used to name certain days or times, but there are a few
       important differences:

       Events can be assigned to any time and duration
	   All holidays are exactly 1 day long.  They are assigned to a period of time from midnight to midnight.

	   Events can be based at any time of the day, and may be of any duration.

       Events don't affect business mode calculations
	   Unlike holidays, events are completely ignored when doing business mode calculations.

       Whereas holidays were added with business mode math in mind, events were added with calendar and scheduling applications in mind.

       Every line in the events section is of the form:

	  EVENT = NAME

       where NAME is the name of the event, and EVENT defines when it occurs and its duration.	An EVENT can be defined in the following ways:

	  Date
	  YMD
	  YM
	  Recur

	  Date	; Date
	  YMD	; YMD
	  YM	; YM
	  Date	; Delta
	  Recur ; Delta

       Date refers to a full date/time (and is any string that can be parsed by Date::Manip::Date::parse). YMD is any string which can be parsed
       by Date::Manip::Date::parse_date. YM is any string which can be parsed by the parse_date method to give a date in the current year. Recur
       is a partial or fully specified recurrence. Delta is any string that can be parsed to form a delta.

       With the "Date" form, or the "Recur" form, the event starts at the time (or times) specified by the date or recurrence, and last 1 hour
       long.  With the "YMD" and "YM" forms, the event occurs on the given day, and lasts all day.

       With all of the two part forms ("Date;Date", "YM;YM", etc.), the event starts at the first date and goes to the second date, or goes an
       amount of time specified by the delta.

       The "YMD;YMD" and "YM;YM" forms means that the event lasts from the start of the first date to the end of the second. In the Date;Date
       form, the event goes from the first date to the second date inclusive. In other words, both dates are in the event. In the "Date;Delta" and
       "Recur;Delta" forms, the Delta tells the length of the event. Also, in the Date;Date form, the second date may NOT be expressed as a delta.

       Currently, having an event longer than 1 year is NOT supported, but no checking is done for this.

KNOWN BUGS

       None known.

BUGS AND QUESTIONS

       Please refer to the Date::Manip::Problems documentation for information on submitting bug reports or questions to the author.

SEE ALSO

       Date::Manip	  - main module documentation

LICENSE

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

AUTHOR

       Sullivan Beck (sbeck@cpan.org)

perl v5.12.1							    2010-01-12						  Date::Manip::Holidays(3)