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

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 timezome.

       strptime(DATE [, ZONE])
	   "strptime" takes the same arguments as str2time but returns an array of values "($ss,$mm,$hh,$day,$month,$year,$zone)". 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 are English, French, German and Italian. Changing the language is done
       via a static method call, for example

	       Date::Parse->language('German');

       will cause Date::Parse to attempt to parse any subsequent dates in German.

       This is only a first pass, I am considering changing this to be

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

       I am open to suggestions on this.

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

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@pobox.com>

COPYRIGHT

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

perl v5.8.0							    2002-06-06							    Date::Parse(3)