NAME Date::Fmtstr2time - Functions to format date/time strings into a Perl Time based on a "Picture" format string. AUTHOR Jim Turner (c) 2015-2019, Jim Turner under the same license that Perl 5 itself is. All rights reserved. SYNOPSIS use Date::Fmtstr2time; my $timevalue = str2time('12-25-2015 07:15 AM', 'mm-dd-yyyy hh:mi PM'); die $timevalue if ($timevalue =~ /\D/); print "Perl time (seconds since epoc): $timevalue.\n"; DESCRIPTION Date::Fmtstr2time provides a single function str2time that accepts a date or date / time as a string (*data-string*), and a *format-string* consisting of special substrings which represent the format of various parts of a date and time value. It returns a standard Perl (Unix) "time" value (a large integer equivalent to the number of seconds since 1980) or an error string. METHODS $integer = str2time(*data-string*, *format-string*); Returns a standard Perl (Unix) "time" value (a large integer) on success, or an error message string on failure. One can easily check for failure by checking the result for any non-integer characters (=~ /\D/). The *format-string* tells the software what format to expect the date / time value in the *data-string* to be in. For example: $s = &str2time('01-09-2016 01:20 AM (Sat) (January)', 'mm-dd-yyyy hh:mi PM (Day) (Month)'); would set $s to 1452324000, (the Unix time equivalent). Special Formatting Substrings There are numerous choices of special format substrings which can be used in an infinite number of combinations to produce the desired results. They are listed below: a, A, am, or AM - Assume hour is AM (if 1-11), and convert 12 to midnight (0 in 24-hour time). (all specifiers are identical and case insensitive). See also: p, P, pm, or PM below. day, Day, or DAY - Three letter abbreviation of the day of the week (case insensitive), ie. "sun". Reason for the three versions is to match up with Date::Time2fmtstr, which has three separate versions for *outputting* the desired case, but here (*inputting*), case doesn't matter. This applies also to Month, etc. and similiarly to functions that pad or don't pad with leading zeros! dayofweek, Dayofweek, or DAYOFWEEK - Day of the week (case insensitive). ddd - Number of days since beginning of year. NOTE: This is calculated by adding the number of SECONDS (86400 per day) to midnight, 1/1/current-year, so if spanning a daylight-savings time boundary may result in +1 hour difference, which the underlying Perl localtime/timelocal functions will take into account! For example, if the current time was "1570286966" (2019/10/05 09:49:26), the following code: print &time2str(&str2time(&time2str(1570286966, 'ddd, hh:mi:ss'), 'ddd, hh:mi:ss'), 'yyyy/mm/dd hh:mi:ss') . "\n"; would print "2019/10/05 10:49:26" due to the fact that 1 hour (3600 seconds) was automatically skipped over when DST was imposed between 1 January and 5 October. This "feature" only applies when calculating the date/time based on days since beginning of the year ("ddd"). dd, d1 - Day of month (1 or 2 digits, left padded with a zero if needed), ie. "3" or "03" for March. d0, d - Numeric day of the week zero-based (Sunday=0, Monday=1, ... Saturday=6). hh, h1 - Hour in common format, ie. 1-12 (1 or 2 digits, as needed). (see AM and PM specifiers). hhmi, h1mi - Hours and minutes in 12-hour time (hours and minutes no colon). hhmiss - Hours, minutes and seconds in 12-hour time (no colons). Must be six digits. hh24, HHmi - Hours and minutes in 24-hour (military) time (no colon). HH, H1 - Hour in 24-hour format, ie. 00-23 (1 or 2 digits, as needed). HHmiss - Hours, minutes and seconds in 24-hour (military) time (no colons). Must be six digits. mi - Minute, ie. 0-59 (1 or 2 digits, as needed). mm, m1 - Number of month (1 or 2 digits, as needed), ie. "1" or "01" for January. mmdd - Numeric date in 4 digits, ie. "0107" for January, 7, (current year). mmddyy - Numeric date in 6 digits, ie. "010715" for January 7, 2015. mmddyyyy - Numeric date in 8 digits, ie. "01072015" for January 7, 2015. mmmm, mmm0 - Minutes since start of day (0-3599). mmyy - Numeric date in 4 digits, ie. "0115" for January, 2015. mmyyyy - Numeric date in 6 digits, ie. "012015" for January, 2015. mon, Mon, or MON - Three letter abbreviation of the month (case insensitive), ie. "jan" for January. month, Month, or MONTH - The Full name of the month (case insensitive), ie. "january". p, P, pm, or PM - Assume hour is noon if 12, otherwise, convert (add 12 to) 1-11 to convert to PM (13-23 in 24 hour time). (all specifiers are identical). q - Number of the quarter of the year - (1-4). rm - Roman numeral for the month (i-xii) in lower case. RM - Roman numeral for the month (I-XII) in upper case. ss - Seconds since start of last minute (1 or 2 digits as needed), ie. 0-59. sssss, ssss0 - Seconds since start of day (0-86399) 1-5 digits as needed (leading zeros ignored). w - Number of week (one-based) of the month (1-5). ww - Number of week (one-based) of the year (1-52) (1 or 2 digits as needed). yy, rr - Year in last 2 digits. yymm - Numeric date in 4 digits, ie. "1501" for January, 2015. yymmdd - Numeric date in 6 digits, ie. "150107" for January 7, 2015. yyyy, rrrr - Year in 4 digits. yyyymm - Numeric date in 6 digits, ie. "201501" for January, 2015. yyyymmdd - Numeric date in 8 digits, ie. "20150107" for January 7, 2015. yyyymmddhhmi - Numeric date/time in 12 digits, ie. "201501071345" for January 7, 2015 1:45pm. yyyymmddhhmiss - Numeric date/time in 14 digits, ie. "20150107134512" for January 7, 2015 1:45:12pm. DEPENDENCIES Perl 5 Time::Local RECCOMENDS Date::Time2fmtstr BUGS Please report any bugs or feature requests to "bug-Date-Fmtstr2time at rt.cpan.org", or through the web interface at . I will be notified, and then you'll automatically be notified of progress on your bug as I make changes. SUPPORT You can find documentation for this module with the perldoc command. perldoc Date::Fmtstr2time You can also look for information at: * RT: CPAN's request tracker (report bugs here) * AnnoCPAN: Annotated CPAN documentation * CPAN Ratings * Search CPAN SEE ALSO Date::Time2fmtstr KEYWORDS Date::Fmtstr2time, Date::Time2fmtstr, formatting, picture_clause, strings LICENSE AND COPYRIGHT Copyright (C) 2015-2019 Jim Turner This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the the Artistic License (2.0). You may obtain a copy of the full license at: Any use, modification, and distribution of the Standard or Modified Versions is governed by this Artistic License. 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