curl_getdate(3) [redhat man page]
curl_getdate(3) libcurl Manual curl_getdate(3) NAME
curl_getdate - Convert an date in a ASCII string to number of seconds since January 1, 1970 SYNOPSIS
#include <curl/curl.h> time_t curl_getdate(char *datestring, time_t *now"); DESCRIPTION
This function returns the number of seconds since January 1st 1970, for the date and time that the datestring parameter specifies. The now parameter is there and should hold the current time to allow the datestring to specify relative dates/times. Read further in the date string parser section below. PARSING DATES AND TIMES
A "date" is a string, possibly empty, containing many items separated by whitespace. The whitespace may be omitted when no ambiguity arises. The empty string means the beginning of today (i.e., midnight). Order of the items is immaterial. A date string may contain many flavors of items: calendar date items This can be specified in a number of different ways. Including 1970-09-17, 70-9-17, 70-09-17, 9/17/72, 24 September 1972, 24 Sept 72, 24 Sep 72, Sep 24, 1972, 24-sep-72, 24sep72. The year can also be omitted, for example: 9/17 or "sep 17". time of the day items This string specifies the time on a given day. Syntax supported includes: 18:19:0, 18:19, 6:19pm, 18:19-0500 (for specifying the time zone as well). time zone items Specifies international time zone. There are a few acronyms supported, but in general you should instead use the specific realtive time compared to UTC. Supported formats include: -1200, MST, +0100. day of the week items Specifies a day of the week. If this is mentioned alone it means that day of the week in the future. Days of the week may be spelled out in full: `Sunday', `Monday', etc or they may be abbreviated to their first three letters, optionally followed by a period. The special abbreviations `Tues' for `Tuesday', `Wednes' for `Wednesday' and `Thur' or `Thurs' for `Thursday' are also allowed. A number may precede a day of the week item to move forward supplementary weeks. It is best used in expression like `third mon- day'. In this context, `last DAY' or `next DAY' is also acceptable; they move one week before or after the day that DAY by itself would represent. relative items A relative item adjusts a date (or the current date if none) forward or backward. Example syntax includes: "1 year", "1 year ago", "2 days", "4 weeks". The string `tomorrow' is worth one day in the future (equivalent to `day'), the string `yesterday' is worth one day in the past (equivalent to `day ago'). pure numbers If the decimal number is of the form YYYYMMDD and no other calendar date item appears before it in the date string, then YYYY is read as the year, MM as the month number and DD as the day of the month, for the specified calendar date. RETURN VALUE
This function returns zero when it fails to parse the date string. Otherwise it returns the number of seconds as described. AUTHORS
Originally written by Steven M. Bellovin <smb@research.att.com> while at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Later tweaked by a couple of people on Usenet. Completely overhauled by Rich $alz <rsalz@bbn.com> and Jim Berets <jberets@bbn.com> in August, 1990. SEE ALSO
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Surely there are some, you tell me! libcurl 7.0 5 March 2001 curl_getdate(3)
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curl_getdate(3) libcurl Manual curl_getdate(3) NAME
curl_getdate - Convert a date string to number of seconds since January 1, 1970 SYNOPSIS
#include <curl/curl.h> time_t curl_getdate(char *datestring, time_t *now ); DESCRIPTION
This function returns the number of seconds since January 1st 1970 in the UTC time zone, for the date and time that the datestring parame- ter specifies. The now parameter is not used, pass a NULL there. NOTE: This function was rewritten for the 7.12.2 release and this documentation covers the functionality of the new one. The new one is not feature-complete with the old one, but most of the formats supported by the new one was supported by the old too. PARSING DATES AND TIMES
A "date" is a string containing several items separated by whitespace. The order of the items is immaterial. A date string may contain many flavors of items: calendar date items Can be specified several ways. Month names can only be three-letter english abbreviations, numbers can be zero-prefixed and the year may use 2 or 4 digits. Examples: 06 Nov 1994, 06-Nov-94 and Nov-94 6. time of the day items This string specifies the time on a given day. You must specify it with 6 digits with two colons: HH:MM:SS. To not include the time in a date string, will make the function assume 00:00:00. Example: 18:19:21. time zone items Specifies international time zone. There are a few acronyms supported, but in general you should instead use the specific relative time compared to UTC. Supported formats include: -1200, MST, +0100. day of the week items Specifies a day of the week. Days of the week may be spelled out in full (using english): `Sunday', `Monday', etc or they may be abbreviated to their first three letters. This is usually not info that adds anything. pure numbers If a decimal number of the form YYYYMMDD appears, then YYYY is read as the year, MM as the month number and DD as the day of the month, for the specified calendar date. EXAMPLES
Sun, 06 Nov 1994 08:49:37 GMT Sunday, 06-Nov-94 08:49:37 GMT Sun Nov 6 08:49:37 1994 06 Nov 1994 08:49:37 GMT 06-Nov-94 08:49:37 GMT Nov 6 08:49:37 1994 06 Nov 1994 08:49:37 06-Nov-94 08:49:37 1994 Nov 6 08:49:37 GMT 08:49:37 06-Nov-94 Sunday 94 6 Nov 08:49:37 1994 Nov 6 06-Nov-94 Sun Nov 6 94 1994.Nov.6 Sun/Nov/6/94/GMT Sun, 06 Nov 1994 08:49:37 CET 06 Nov 1994 08:49:37 EST Sun, 12 Sep 2004 15:05:58 -0700 Sat, 11 Sep 2004 21:32:11 +0200 20040912 15:05:58 -0700 20040911 +0200 STANDARDS
This parser was written to handle date formats specified in RFC 822 (including the update in RFC 1123) using time zone name or time zone delta and RFC 850 (obsoleted by RFC 1036) and ANSI C's asctime() format. These formats are the only ones RFC2616 says HTTP applications may use. RETURN VALUE
This function returns -1 when it fails to parse the date string. Otherwise it returns the number of seconds as described. If the year is larger than 2037 on systems with 32 bit time_t, this function will return 0x7fffffff (since that is the largest possible signed 32 bit number). Having a 64 bit time_t is not a guarantee that dates beyond 03:14:07 UTC, January 19, 2038 will work fine. On systems with a 64 bit time_t but with a crippled mktime(), curl_getdate will return -1 in this case. REWRITE
The former version of this function was built with yacc and was not only very large, it was also never quite understood and it wasn't pos- sible to build with non-GNU tools since only GNU Bison could make it thread-safe! The rewrite was done for 7.12.2. The new one is much smaller and uses simpler code. libcurl 7.0 12 Aug 2005 curl_getdate(3)