Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi,
Is there any way I can get the difference between two dates in terms of days?
I have used this method so far, but I cant format it in terms of days.

@a=&DateCalc($date1,$date2,0);

The o/p that I am getting is sort of like this:
+0:0:0:4:0:0:0

I just want to get 4 days as an o/p.
Splitting it and reading each and every element might just be an overhead.
And I dont have an option of using DateCalc ...
Thanks in advance.

I think I found the soln ... Please correct me if I am wrong (which I am most of the times ) ...

Code:

$a=&DateCalc($date1,$date2,0);
$diff=&Delta_Format($a,0,"%dt");
print "\n$diff";

And now it is giving me an o/p like:

Code:

4.000000