Here's the problem, and you get credit for discovering what I believe to be a bug in Date::Manip (or its documentation).

The documentation for Date::Manip correctly states that ParseDateString() will not correctly handle a raw number of seconds since epoch. Obviously, seconds since epoch is exactly what $s->mtime() is giving you. So you need a way of getting Date::Manip's ParseDateString() to recognize that what you're handing it is seconds since epoch.

The POD for Date::Manip goes on to tell you how to do that:

NOTE: One of the most frequently asked questions that I have gotten is how to parse seconds since the epoch. ParseDateString cannot simply parse a number as the seconds since the epoch (it conflicts with some ISO-8601 date formats). There are two ways to get this information. First, you can do the following:

$secs = ...         # seconds since Jan 1, 1970  00:00:00 GMT
$date = &DateCalc("Jan 1, 1970  00:00:00 GMT",$secs);

[download]

Second, you can call it directly as: 

$date = &ParseDateString("epoch $secs");

[download]

You're attempting to use the second method, and at least for me on Win32 ActivePerl 5.8.6 with Date::Manip version 5.42, that second method simply doesn't work as advertised. It fails to convince Date::Manip that you've handed it a string of seconds since epoch, and the result is that ParseDateString doesn't know what it's looking at, and defaults to returning an empty string.

I have gone on to confirm that at least the first method suggested in the documentation for Date::Manip does work. That is,

printf "%s: Age [%s], size[%d]\n", 
    $farm,
    DateCalc( "Jan 1, 1970  00:00:00 GMT",$s->mtime() ),
    $s->size();

[download]

Try that on for size. ;)

Update: Bug alert has been rescinded. See my followup below.


Dave

In reply to Re^3: Human Readable Date by davido
in thread Human Readable Date by FireyIce01

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