Date Calculation

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

If I wanted to find out what day of the year it is, how would I do that in Perl? I know I could easily just do a `date +%j` or something, but I'm curious how it could be done with the language itself in a manner that's OS-independent.

Also, if I wanted to find out how many days there are between two dates, how might I go about doing it? For example, if I wanted to calculate how many days there are between now and June 17th of 2003, how could it be done?

Thanks for any suggestions :)

Comment on Date Calculation

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Date Calculation by Enlil (Parson) on Nov 08, 2002 at 22:20 UTC
For the day of the year today falls on you could just use: `$day_of_the_year = (localtime)[7];` [download] For the days between dates (and all your date/time needs), try searching CPAN for date, but for your current question Date::Calc would be a good place to start. -enlil	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Date Calculation by gjb (Vicar) on Nov 08, 2002 at 22:14 UTC
You could have a look at Date::Calc which allows for a lot of date related transformations. Hope this helps, -gjb-	[reply]
Re: Date Calculation by tadman (Prior) on Nov 08, 2002 at 22:59 UTC
Of course, everyone is quick on the draw with Date::Calc, but I think you've already solved the problem yourself. `use POSIX 'strftime'; my $day = strftime("%j", localtime(time()));` [download] You'll find that the `date` command and `strftime` have, not surprisingly, a lot in common. The alternative is to access the appropriate entry in the localtime array, as suggested by Enlil.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Date Calculation by VSarkiss (Monsignor) on Nov 08, 2002 at 22:24 UTC
You said it yourself. You want to do a Date::Calculation. For more in this vein, check out CPAN, the usable FAQ. ;-)	[reply]
Re: Date Calculation by Segfault (Scribe) on Nov 09, 2002 at 02:49 UTC
Thanks a bunch, everyone - Date::Calc did the trick perfectly. :)	[reply]
Re: Date Calculation by jjdraco (Scribe) on Nov 08, 2002 at 22:23 UTC
theres very question was the problem for week 1 of QOTW you should go check out the archives, or check out CPAN it has some good modules for doing this. theres a lot of little things you have to be careful of when dealing with dates and its just eaiser to use one of CPANs modules than to try and roll you're own jjdraco learning Perl one statement at a time.	[reply]