Hello monks,

I really hope that someone can help me here...

I have converted all data from an access database into xml for importing into another database. However, I have a problem in that the formats of the date field vary which this other database doesn't like.

The formats can be in the following:

DD/MM/YYYY
DD/MM/YY
D/M/YY
DD-Dec-YY - e.g. 02-Dec-03, the ones in the db are always in december

The dates appear next to these tags.

<create_ts>
<delta_ts>
<adr_when>

The format i would like them all to be in is:

YYYY-MM-DD 00:00:00

The time can be left as it is.

I dont have much experience of perl other than a module i did a long time ago at college, ive just been asked to get the info from one db to the other and from what i know, i thought perl is probably the best way to do this rather than manually go through 6000 problem reports!

Thanks in advance for your help, Martin Taylor.


In reply to changing date formats to standard format by Anonymous Monk

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.