Converting from Date Time to Unix Time

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

Currently my Date Time is given as: Oct 30 2001 7:32AM. I need to convert it to Unix Time and I'm having problems...

#! /usr/local/bin/perl 
# A perl program to read the notifAlarmLog Table


use FileHandle;
use IPC::Open2;
use Symbol;
# use Tk;
use Sybase::CTlib;
use Time::Local;
use strict;
my $dbAlarm=new Sybase::CTlib 'harmless','harmless','OPSYB1','';
$dbAlarm->ct_sql("use TomTest");

my $sql =  "SELECT * FROM  notifAlarmLog
            GROUP BY name, AlarmStart";
my (@records) =  $dbAlarm->ct_sql($sql);
my ($record);
my ($t);
my ($PSFaultCount) = 0; # Keeps count of Power Supply Faults
foreach $record (@records) {
  $PSFaultCount++;
  print "$record->[0], $record->[1], $record->[2], $record->[3]\n";
 }
print "There are $PSFaultCount Valid PS Faults.\n";
[download]

Comment on Converting from Date Time to Unix Time Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Converting from Date Time to Unix Time by miyagawa (Chaplain) on Jul 08, 2002 at 16:01 UTC
use Time::ParseDate's parsedate() function. -- Tatsuhiko Miyagawa miyagawa@cpan.org	[reply]
Re: Converting from Date Time to Unix Time by mpeppler (Vicar) on Jul 08, 2002 at 18:42 UTC
Just to add my own wrinkle to this issue - you can convert to Unix time directly in your SQL query: `select datediff(ss, 'jan 1 1970', datetime_column) from ...` [download] That will return a unix time value that assumes that the database server runs in the GMT (or UTC) timezone, which it probably doesn't. You can convert the `$time` value from this expression to the real Unix time value for your timezone with: `use Time::Local; $time = timelocal(gmtime($time_from_database));` [download] OK - so it's not the simplest way to do this - however it's good to be aware of what you can do at the database level. :-) Michael	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Converting from Date Time to Unix Time by Abigail-II (Bishop) on Jul 08, 2002 at 16:41 UTC
Interesting, but what exactly is your problem? I don't see any place in your code where you are trying to convert times. In fact, I don't see any time handling at all in your code. What do you have, what do you want, what did you try, and what happened when you tried? Abigail	[reply]
Re: Converting from Date Time to Unix Time by rbc (Curate) on Jul 08, 2002 at 17:52 UTC
You might want to look at Date::Manip's UnixDate sub.	[reply]
Re: Converting from Date Time to Unix Time by Aristotle (Chancellor) on Jul 08, 2002 at 17:07 UTC
Besides miyagawa's and Abigail-II's points which I second, some minor nits: You should `SELECT` specific columns rather than a broad sweeping ``. `print(join(", ", @$record[0..3]), "\n");` is easier to maintain. Makeshifts last the longest.*	[reply] [d/l]