Greetings All. I thought this should be really simple using Time::Piece, however I am not getting the result I would expect. As part of a larger script, I just want find if a datetime in a specific format is within the last 30 minutes. 

use strict;
use warnings;
use Time::Piece;

my $ctime = Time::Piece->new;
my $oldtime = Time::Piece->strptime('Dec 19 17:01:00 2016', '%b %d %T 
+%Y');

print "The current time is $ctime\n";
print "The old time is $oldtime\n";

my $halfago = $ctime - 1800;

print "Half an hour ago is $halfago\n";

if ($oldtime > $halfago)
{
    print "Old time is within a half hour\n";
}
else
{
    print "Old time is outside a half hour\n";
}

[download]

I ran the script just now, and this is the output: 

The current time is Mon Dec 19 17:07:06 2016
The old time is Mon Dec 19 17:01:00 2016
Half an hour ago is Mon Dec 19 16:37:06 2016
Old time is outside a half hour

[download]

It doesn't matter what time I set in the script, it always drops down to the else block. I though perhaps I saw something about strptime and GMT, but now I can't find that page again... I think I am probably totally frazzled at this point and am missing something simple. Thanks!

In reply to Simple (I thought) time comparison? by sjessie

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.