Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hope someone will be able to help me. I tried looking at previous answers and questions but did not find a solution.

Restrictions: Perl v. 5.8.4, Solaris 10, default modules

I would like to convert a specified time (e.g., Wed Feb 4 12:34:56 2015) to an epoch time using one line of Perl.

I was thinking about using:

echo "56,34,12,4,1,115"|perl -MPOSIX -e 'print mktime(<stdin>)'

However, <stdin> is treated as just one variable instead of all the variables.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Convert Time to Epoch Using External Variable
by choroba (Cardinal) on Feb 04, 2015 at 14:45 UTC
    You can use the numbers as arguments instead of reading them from the standard input: 
    perl -MPOSIX -e 'print mktime @ARGV' -- 56 34 12 4 1 115

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    If you need to use the standard input and the comma separated format, use split: 

    echo 56,34,12,4,1,115 | perl -MPOSIX -e 'print mktime split /,/, <>'

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    لսႽ† ᥲᥒ⚪⟊Ⴙᘓᖇ Ꮅᘓᖇ⎱ Ⴙᥲ𝇋ƙᘓᖇ
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      Note the use of -- to tell perl (the executable) to pass the remaining arguments to the Perl script (in this case, given by -e). See Command Switches.

      -QM
      --
      Quantum Mechanics: The dreams stuff is made of

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        I think the -- flag to stop option parsing is only necessary if something you want treated as an argument actually looks like it might be an option, e.g. -999 or --foo. In the code given it is not required but it does no harm and using it is not a bad habit to get into.

        $ perl -MPOSIX -le 'print mktime @ARGV' -- 56 34 12 4 1 115
1423053296
$ perl -MPOSIX -le 'print mktime @ARGV' 56 34 12 4 1 115
1423053296
$

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        I hope this is of interest.

        Cheers,

        JohnGG

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      Thank you for your help!

      The @ARGV seems like the best option for me.

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