Generates fake dates and times, formatted as human-readable date-time strings(DD-MM-YYYY:HH24:MM:SS in Oracle's date format); I needed a bunch of sample data to test a database application. You may need to generate old tax records or whatnot (warning: this code not guaranteed to save you from audits). Does no error checking, but should handle leap years nicely.

A tip of the hat to OeufMayo, who suggested a *nix timestamp (which limits the usefulness a bit, but not that much).

Combine it with Time::Local and timelocal to generate formatted time strings that lie between two dates.

sub fakedate {
    my ($lower_bound, $upper_bound) = @_;
    my $timestamp =  $lower_bound + int rand ($upper_bound - $lower_bo
+und +1);
    my @bits = (localtime($timestamp))[0..5];
    $bits[5]+=1900; # year
    $bits[4]++;  #month comes back as 0-11
    sprintf("%02d-%02d-%4d:%02d:%02d:%02d", @bits[3,4,5,2,1,0]);
}

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In reply to Generate Fake dates by arturo

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