Can Date::Manip parse a unix timestamp ?

intuited has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I've been using this for a while, I find it useful for generating RFC-3339-compliant timestamps.

However I'm at a bit of a loss for a way to get it to parse dates like

Thu Jan 21 17:13:27 2010 -0400

These can be parsed by the str2time() function in Date::Parse, which returns a Unix timestamp (ie seconds since epoch). However there's no readily apparent way to enter a Unix timestamp into Date::Manip's function set. This in itself is a pretty serious flaw in the module.. unless I'm missing something?

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Re: Can Date::Manip parse a unix timestamp? by ambrus (Abbot) on May 05, 2010 at 08:37 UTC
For unix timestamps, just prepend `"epoch "`. This is well documented. `$ perl -wE 'use Date::Manip; say UnixDate("epoch 1264108407", "%O\n")' + 2010-01-21T22:13:27` [download] If you have Date::Manip 6, you can also parse that format with Date::Manip directly, though not with the default parsing rules, you have to give the format explicitly. `$ perl -wE 'use Date::Manip 6.0; my $d = Date::Manip::Date->new; $d->p +arse_format("%a %b %d %T %Y %z", "Thu Jan 21 17:13:27 2010 -0400"); s +ay $d->printf("%O");' 2010-01-21T17:13:27` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: Can Date::Manip parse a unix timestamp? by SBECK (Chaplain) on May 05, 2010 at 15:31 UTC
Just to put in my opinion... I'd like to see Date::Manip able to parse the date "Thu Jan 21 17:13:27 2010 -0400" directly without having to resort to the parse_format function... so I'll add it to my todo list. The parse_format function is good for catching formats I hadn't anticipated, but this one is common enough I should be able to parse it directly. It's an unusual format in that the time portion and date portion are intermingled. Date::Manip 6 parses the time and date portions separately, so this format is not a trivial date format to add unfortunately.	[reply]
Re^3: Can Date::Manip parse a unix timestamp? by ambrus (Abbot) on Oct 28, 2015 at 11:09 UTC
For reference, the date format `"%a %b %d %T %Y"` (without timezone) came up again in a later question Perl date calculation and formatting. Date::Manip can parse such dates since version 6.31 (2012-03-01).	[reply] [d/l]