I just got done writing a method to compare two dates. The purpose of the function is to return 1 if the first date is greater than the second (further in the future) and 0 otherwise. The two dates are passed to a subroutine in the following format:
[M]M/[D]D/YYYY

[download]
The elements within [] are optional characters. For example, 1/1/2001 would be legal, as would 12/12/2001, but not, 12/12/01. The year requires all four digits.

This is the function I came up with, but I just feel that there must be an easier way to accomplish this task. 
sub isGreater
{
   my $currDate = $_[0];
   my $oldDate = $_[1];
   
   my $currMonth = substr($currDate, 0, index($currDate, "\/"));
   $currDate = substr($currDate, index($currDate, "\/")+1);
   my $oldMonth = substr($oldDate, 0, index($oldDate, "\/"));
   $oldDate = substr($oldDate, index($oldDate, "\/")+1);
   my $currDay = substr($currDate, 0, index($currDate, "\/"));
   $currDate = substr($currDate, index($currDate, "\/")+1);
   my $oldDay = substr($oldDate, 0, index($oldDate, "\/"));
   $oldDate = substr($oldDate, index($oldDate, "\/")+1);
   my $currYear = $currDate;
   my $oldYear = $oldDate;
      
   if ( $currYear > $oldYear )
   {
      return 1;
   }
   elsif ( $currMonth > $oldMonth )
   {
      return 1;
   }
   elsif ( $currDay > $oldDay )
   {
      return 1;
   }
   return 0;
}

[download]
As you can see, I'm simply grabbing all the characters up to a "/" and then I go back and cut off the front of the date up to (and including that "/"). Simply put, I grab the month from $oldDate, store it into $oldMonth, and then modify $oldDate to go from MM/DD/YYYY to DD/YYYY. For example, if $oldDate contained 1/12/2001, $oldMonth would contain 1 and $oldDate would contain 12/2001.

This method works fine (as far as I can tell - I'm sure it could use more testing), but is there an easier way to pull this off? I'm not overly familiar with Perl and I wonder if there is a built in function to do something quite similar to what I'm doing here.

Thanks,
- Sherlock

In reply to Is there an easier way? by Sherlock

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.