parsedate(3) [netbsd man page]
PARSEDATE(3) BSD Library Functions Manual PARSEDATE(3) NAME
parsedate -- date parsing function LIBRARY
System Utilities Library (libutil, -lutil) SYNOPSIS
#include <util.h> time_t parsedate(const char *datestr, const time_t *time, const int *tzoff); DESCRIPTION
The parsedate() function parses a datetime from datestr described in english relative to an optional time point and an optional timezone off- set in seconds specified in tzoff. If either time or tzoff are NULL, then the current time and timezone offset are used. The datestr is a sequence of white-space separated items. The white-space is optional the concatenated items are not ambiguous. An empty datestr is equivalent to midnight today (the beginning of this day). The following words have the indicated numeric meanings: last = -1, this = 0, first, next, or one = 1, second is unused so that it is not confused with ``seconds'', two = 2, third or three = 3, fourth or four = 4, fifth or five = 5, sixth or six = 6, seventh or seven = 7, eighth or eight = 8, ninth or nine = 9, tenth or ten = 10, eleventh or eleven = 11, twelfth or twoelve = 12. The following words are recognized in English only: AM, PM, a.m., p.m. The months: january, february, march, april, may, june, july, august, september, sept, october, november, december, The days of the week: sunday, monday, tuesday, tues, wednesday, wednes, thursday, thur, thurs, friday, saturday. Time units: year, month, fortnight, week, day, hour, minute, min, second, sec, tomorrow, yesterday. Timezone names: gmt, ut, utc, wet, bst, wat, at, ast, adt, est, edt, cst, cdt, mst, mdt, pst, pdt, yst, ydt, hst, hdt, cat, ahst, nt, idlw, cet, met, mewt, mest, swt, sst, fwt, fst, eet, bt, zp4, zp5, zp6, wast, wadt, cct, jst, east, eadt, gst, nzt, nzst, nzdt, idle. A variety of unambiguous dates are recognized: 69-09-10 For years between 69-99 we assume 1900+ and for years between 0-68 we assume 2000+. 2006-11-17 An ISO-8601 date. 10/1/2000 October 10, 2000; the common US format. 20 Jun 1994 23jun2001 1-sep-06 Other common abbreviations. 1/11 the year can be omitted As well as times: 10:01 10:12pm 12:11:01.000012 12:21-0500 Relative items are also supported: -1 month last friday one week ago this thursday next sunday +2 years Seconds since epoch (also known as UNIX time) are also supported: @735275209 Tue Apr 20 03:06:49 UTC 1993 RETURN VALUES
parsedate() returns the number of seconds passed since the Epoch, or -1 if the date could not be parsed properly. SEE ALSO
date(1), eeprom(8) HISTORY
The parser used in parsedate() was originally written by Steven M. Bellovin while at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It was later tweaked by a couple of people on Usenet. Completely overhauled by Rich $alz and Jim Berets in August, 1990. The parsedate() function first appeared in NetBSD 4.0. BUGS
1 The parsedate() function is not re-entrant or thread-safe. 2 The parsedate() function cannot compute days before the unix epoch (19700101). 3 The parsedate() function assumes years less than 0 mean - year, years less than 70 mean 2000 + year, years less than 100 mean 1900 + year. BSD
December 20, 2010 BSD
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PARSEDATE(3) Library Functions Manual PARSEDATE(3) NAME
parsedate - convert time and date string to number SYNOPSIS
#include <sys/types.h> typedef struct _TIMEINFO { time_t time; long usec; long tzone; } TIMEINFO; time_t parsedate(text, now) char *text; TIMEINFO *now; DESCRIPTION
Parsedate converts many common time specifications into the number of seconds since the epoch -- i.e., a time_t; see time(2). Parsedate returns the time, or -1 on error. Text is a character string containing the time and date. Now is a pointer to the time that should be used for calculating relative dates. If now is NULL, then GetTimeInfo in libinn(3) is used to obtain the current time and time- zone. The character string consists of zero or more specifications of the following form: time A time of day, which is of the form hh[:mm[:ss]] [meridian] [zone] or hhmm [meridian] [zone]. If no meridian is specified, hh is interpreted on a 24-hour clock. date A specific month and day with optional year. The acceptable formats are mm/dd[/yy], yyyy/mm/dd, monthname dd[, yy], dd monthname [yy], and day, dd monthname yy. The default year is the current year. If the year is less then 100, then 1900 is added to it; if it is less then 21, then 2000 is added to it. relative time A specification relative to the current time. The format is number unit; acceptable units are year, month, week, day, hour, minute (or min), and second (or sec). The unit can be specified as a singular or plural, as in 3 weeks. The actual date is calculated according to the following steps. First, any absolute date and/or time is processed and converted. Using that time as the base, day-of-week specifications are added. Next, relative specifications are used. If a date or day is specified, and no absolute or relative time is given, midnight is used. Finally, a correction is applied so that the correct hour of the day is produced after allowing for daylight savings time differences. Parsedate ignores case when parsing all words; unknown words are taken to be unknown timezones, which are treated as GMT. The names of the months and days of the week can be abbreviated to their first three letters, with optional trailing period. Periods are ignored in any timezone or meridian values. BUGS
Parsedate does not accept all desirable and unambiguous constructions. Semantically incorrect dates such as ``February 31'' are accepted. Daylight savings time is always taken as a one-hour change which is wrong for some places. The daylight savings time correction can get confused if parsing a time within an hour of when the reckoning changes, or if given a partial date. HISTORY
Originally written by Steven M. Bellovin <smb@research.att.com> while at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and distributed under the name getdate. A major overhaul was done by Rich $alz <rsalz@bbn.com> and Jim Berets <jberets@bbn.com> in August, 1990. It was further revised (primarily to remove obsolete constructs and timezone names) a year later by Rich (now <rsalz@osf.org>) for Inter- NetNews, and the name was changed. This is revision 1.10, dated 1993/01/29. SEE ALSO
date(1), ctime(3), libinn(3), time(2). PARSEDATE(3)