Date/time manipulations--formatting, calculating deltas etc--is one case where I would definitely advocate not rolling your own. I mostly use Date::Manip (although it is, in the authors words, probably the slowest of the Date/Time modules) and despite the fact that the pod itself needs pod. I beleive Date::Calc is nearly as flexible and a lot faster.

An example of using Date:Manip might help you decide. The following shows the script itself and using it to get the delta between two dates in seconds, minutes, hours, days and weeks. 

C:\test>type datemanip.pl
#! perl -slw
use strict;
use Date::Manip;

print Delta_Format( 
    DateCalc( 
        ParseDate($ARGV[0]),
        ParseDate($ARGV[1]) 
    )
    , 0, $ARGV[2]||'%dh'
);


C:\test>datemanip " 2/28/2000 11:57:29 PM" " 3/1/2000 1:40:03 pm" %st
135754.000000

C:\test>datemanip " 2/28/2000 11:57:29 PM" " 3/1/2000 1:40:03 pm" %mt
2262.566667

C:\test>datemanip " 2/28/2000 11:57:29 PM" " 3/1/2000 1:40:03 pm" %ht
37.709444

C:\test>datemanip " 2/28/2000 11:57:29 PM" " 3/1/2000 1:40:03 pm" %dt
1.571227

C:\test>datemanip " 2/28/2000 11:57:29 PM" " 3/1/2000 1:40:03 pm" %wt
0.224461

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1) When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2) The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible
3) Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Arthur C. Clarke.

In reply to Re: Elapsed date and time by BrowserUk
in thread Elapsed date and time by dbrock

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