You, too, are computing 60*60*24*365

Yes, but the point was that most of the other samples compute it directly and so they end up computing 60*60 three times and 60*60*24 twice as well as repeating the "number of seconds per minute" 4 times, "minutes per hour" 3 times, etc. I guess the added computations are done at compile time so they matter very little. But if anything I think not computing it directly is likely to be slightly faster and a little cleaner.

Not that any of that is a big deal. I just saw the question, thought of how I've done that many times, figured several people were probably already composing answers, and decided I'd spend my time on something else. Later I wandered back and found quite a few answers, none of which did it the way I usually do. I didn't think my way was so strange so I decided to post it as an example of a different approach and I mentioned the key difference. I wasn't trying to claim that all of the other answers were inferior, in case you got that impression. 

            $left= int( $left / $_ );
            $unit %= $_;

[download]

FYI, I'm don't think that saves you any computations since % just does a divide and takes a remainder. So you have done two divides where my method only does one divide and one multiply. I actually consciously chose my method over using % to avoid the duplicate divide, but that was probably a mistake on my part. I should have just gone with the cleaner code as you suggest. Thanks.

I don't recall how floating-point remainders are computed at the machine level. It seems that integer remainders under C had the property that if you did an integer divide next to computing the corresponding remainder (modulus), then most platforms optimized that to a single instruction. But I doubt that would apply to a Perl script even if you'd done use integer. But worrying about these kinds of details is rarely worth it (other than for the fun of it).

Toss in a use integer;

...and the code wouldn't work on nearly as many input values. I'm probably use integer's single biggest detractor. Without use integer you get (about) 58-bit integers in Perl. With use integer you get 32-bit integers. I guess you could argue that noone needs to nicely format the number of seconds in over 136 years, but I don't want to restrict my routine just for sake of saving 5 characters [ especially not by adding 12 characters :) ].

        - tye (but my friends call me "Tye")

In reply to (tye)Re2: Converting Seconds to Nice Format by tye
in thread Converting Seconds to Nice Format by Segfault

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