Shell Programming and Scripting

#! /usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;
use Time::Local 'timelocal';

my ($d1, $d2, %mnths, @x, @y, $s1, $s2);

($d1, $d2) = ("2012 Jan 31", "2012 Mar 01");

%mnths = ( "Jan" => "00", "Feb" => "01", "Mar" => "02", "Apr" => "03", "May" => "04", "Jun" => "05",
           "Jul" => "06", "Aug" => "07", "Sep" => "08", "Oct" => "09", "Nov" => "10", "Dec" => "11" );

@x = split /\s+/, $d1;
@y = split /\s+/, $d2;

$s1 = timelocal (0, 0, 0, $x[2], $mnths{$x[1]}, $x[0]);
$s2 = timelocal (0, 0, 0, $y[2], $mnths{$y[1]}, $y[0]);

print "No. of days: ", (($s2 - $s1) / (3600 * 24)) + 1; # This is inclusive of both dates. If you don't want it like this, then remove "+1" from the end.