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From: Sullivan Beck <[email protected]>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl.announce,comp.lang.perl.misc
Subject: ANNOUNCE: Date::Manip 5.05 released
Followup-To: comp.lang.perl.misc
Date: 15 Oct 1996 17:45:35 GMT
Organization: Quantum Theory Project, University of Florida
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This is to announce the release of Date::Manip 5.05.


Notes for version 5.05:
 Fixes a few bugs from 5.04.
 Adds support for Time Zones.
 Now parses dates with commas in them.
 Now parses ctime() format dates and those conforming to RFC 822.
 Added support for Swedish dates.
 More flexibility in defining international dates and times (you
   can now define what separators to use to separate hours, minutes,
   seconds in a time, add strings like "noon" which refer to specific
   strings, etc.).
 Lots of minor (and not so minor) documentation changes.

 If you would like to stay informed about future versions of DateManip,
 and especially if you are interested in beta testing future versions,
 let me know.  I announce new releases to comp.lang.perl.announce and
 comp.lang.perl, so if you read these regularly and don't care about the
 latest bug fix or beta-test version, you probably aren't interested in
 this.  If you ARE interested, send mail to [email protected] and I'll
 add you the the list.


This is a set of routines to work with the Gregorian calendar (the one
currently in use).  The Julian calendar defined leap years as every 4th
year.  The Gregorian calendar improved this by making every 100th year
NOT a leap year, unless it was also the 400th year.  The Gregorian
calendar has been extrapolated back to the year 1000 AD and forward to
the year 9999 AD.  Note that in historical context, the Julian calendar
was in use until 1582 when the Gregorian calendar was adopted by the
Catholic church.  Protestant countries did not accept it until later;
Germany and Netherlands in 1698, British Empire in 1752, Russia in 1918.

Note that the Gregorian calendar is itself imperfect.  Each year is on
average 26 seconds too long, which means that every 3,323 years, a day
should be removed from the calendar.  No attempt is made to correct for
that.

Among other things, these routines allow you to:

1.  Enter a date and be able to choose any format conveniant

2.  Compare two dates, entered in widely different formats to determine
   which is earlier

3.  Extract any information you want from ANY date using a format string
   similar to the Unix date command

4.  Determine the amount of time between two dates

5.  Add a time offset to a date to get a second date (i.e. determine the
   date 132 days ago or 2 years and 3 months after Jan 2, 1992)

6.  Work with dates with dates using international formats (foreign month
   names, 12-10-95 referring to October rather than December, etc.).

Each of these tasks is trivial (one or two lines at most) with this package.

Although the word date is used extensively here, it is actually somewhat
misleading.  This package works with the full date AND time (year, month,
day, hour, minute, second).

In the documentation below, US formats are used, but in most cases, a
non-English equivalent will work equally well.

EXAMPLES:

1.  Parsing a date from any conveniant format

 $date=&ParseDate("today");
 $date=&ParseDate("1st thursday in June 1992");
 $date=&ParseDate("05-10-93");
 $date=&ParseDate("12:30 Dec 12th 1880");
 $date=&ParseDate("8:00pm december tenth");
 if (! $date) {
   # Error in the date
 }

2.  Compare two dates

 $date1=&ParseDate($string1);
 $date2=&ParseDate($string2);
 if ($date1 lt $date2) {
   # date1 is earlier
 } else {
   # date2 is earlier (or the two dates are identical)
 }

3.  Extract information from a date.

 print &UnixDate("today","The time is now %T on %b %e, %Y.");
 =>  "The time is now 13:24:08 on Feb  3, 1996."

4.  The amount of time between two dates.

 $date1=&ParseDate($string1);
 $date2=&ParseDate($string2);
 $delta=&DateCalc($date1,$date2,\$err);
 => 0:0:DD:HH:MM:SS   the days, hours, minutes, and seconds between the two
 $delta=&DateCalc($date1,$date2,\$err,1);
 => YY:MM:DD:HH:MM:SS  the years, months, etc. between the two

 Read the documentation in the man page for an explanation of the difference.

5.  To determine a date a given offset from another.

 $date=&DateCalc("today","+ 3hours 12minutes 6 seconds",\$err);
 $date=&DateCalc("12 hours ago","12:30 6Jan90",\$err);

6.  To work with dates in another language.

 &Date_Init("French","non-US");
 $date=&ParseDate("1er decembre 1990");

For documentation on all of the date manipulation routines, read the
man page.

AUTHOR

Sullivan Beck ([email protected])

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