Date::Day problem?!

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

Has anyone else out in the cloisters had trouble with the Date::Day module? All I want is a three character representation of the day in the week for a corresponding date, Seems like a job for Date::day doesn't it?! So why do I NEVER get the correct day back? Here's a wee noddy script that I knocked up to test this module when the results from the big script containing this module reported rubbish!

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
 
###############################################################
# Extra Modules should be declared here.                      #
# All these modules MUST be found on the server attempting to #
# call this script.                                           #
###############################################################
 
use strict ;                                         # Enforce private
+ variables
use Date::Day ;                                      # Returns the act
+ual day of a date

###############################################################
# Set up variables                                            #
###############################################################
# Date and time variables for headings in Emails/files etc.   #
###############################################################
 
my ($day, $mon, $year) = (localtime) [3,4,5] ;
my $date   = sprintf("%02d/%02d/%04d", $day, $mon +=1, $year += 1900);
 
my $today  = undef ;
 
#####################

print "\n\t\t*** test_day starts ***\n" ;

$day = '9' ;
$mon = '8' ;
$year = '2005' ;

print "\n\t\tDay  :: $day" ;
print "\n\t\tMon  :: $mon" ;
print "\n\t\tYear :: $year\n" ;

$today = &day($day,$mon,$year) ;

print "\n\t\tToday is a $today\n" ;

print "\n\t\t*** test_day ends  ***\n" ;
[download]

According to the Date::Day the 9th of August 2005 is a THU! Have I done something mind blowingly stupid? I've looked and looked and can see nothing wrong with my code, any ideas? Cheers, Ronnie
PS Using the current date from localtime - the result is that today is a TUE???????????

Comment on Date::Day problem?! Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Date::Day problem?! by muntfish (Chaplain) on Aug 11, 2005 at 09:53 UTC
According to Date::Day the parameters are in month, day, year order. So when you pass in (9,8,2005) it's telling you (correctly) that the 8th of September is a Thursday. That said, the documentation doesn't look too great and there hasn't been an update for nearly 3 years. There are probably better modules out there. s^^unp(;75N=&9I<V@`ack(u,^;s\|$.+\`\|"$`$'\"$&\"$"\|ee;/m.+h/&&print$&	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: Date::Day problem?! by Ronnie (Scribe) on Aug 11, 2005 at 10:13 UTC
Thanks I misread the parameter sequence!!	[reply]
Re: Date::Day problem?! by gellyfish (Monsignor) on Aug 11, 2005 at 09:47 UTC
I would recommend that you use `POSIX::strftime` which has the added advantage of using the appropriate locale: `use POSIX qw(locale_h); + foreach my $locale (qw(en_GB de_DE fr_FR es_ES)) { POSIX::setlocale(LC_TIME,$locale); print POSIX::strftime("%a\n", localtime); }` [download] /J\	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Date::Day problem?! by salva (Canon) on Aug 11, 2005 at 09:30 UTC
use DateTime instead of Date::Day.	[reply]
Re: Date::Day problem?! by ikegami (Patriarch) on Aug 11, 2005 at 15:56 UTC
You should be using `$today = &day($mon,$day,$year) ;` [download] instead of `$today = &day($day,$mon,$year) ;` [download] The following does the same, and it uses only core modules: `use POSIX qw( strftime ); use Time::Local qw( timegm ); print strftime("%a", gmtime(timegm(0, 0, 0, $day, $mon-1, $year)));` [download] or for current local time: `use POSIX qw( strftime ); use Time::Local qw( timelocal ); print strftime("%a", localtime);` [download] Use `%A` instead of `%a` if you are interested in the full name of the day instead of the three letter abbrieviation.	[reply] [d/l] [select]