lib::HTTP::DateUser Contributed Perl Documentatlib::HTTP::Date(3)NAME
time2str, str2time - date conversion routines
SYNOPSIS
use HTTP::Date;
$stringGMT = time2str(time); # Format as GMT ASCII time
$time = str2time($stringGMT); # convert ASCII date to machine time
DESCRIPTION
This module provides two functions that deal with the HTTP
date format.
time2str([$time])
The time2str() function converts a machine time (seconds
since epoch) to a string. If the function is called
without an argument, it will use the current time.
The string returned is in the format defined by the
HTTP/1.0 specification. This is a fixed length subset of
the format defined by RFC 1123, represented in Universal
Time (GMT). An example of this format is:
Thu, 03 Feb 1994 17:09:00 GMT
str2time($str [, $zone])
The str2time() function converts a string to machine time.
It returns undef if the format is unrecognized, or the
year is not between 1970 and 2038. The function is able
to parse the following formats:
"Wed, 09 Feb 1994 22:23:32 GMT" -- HTTP format
"Thu Feb 3 17:03:55 GMT 1994" --ctime(3) format
"Thu Feb 3 00:00:00 1994", -- ANSI C asctime() format
"Tuesday, 08-Feb-94 14:15:29 GMT" -- old rfc850 HTTP format
"Tuesday, 08-Feb-1994 14:15:29 GMT" -- broken rfc850 HTTP format
"03/Feb/1994:17:03:55 -0700" -- common logfile format
"09 Feb 1994 22:23:32 GMT" -- HTTP format (no weekday)
"08-Feb-94 14:15:29 GMT" -- rfc850 format (no weekday)
"08-Feb-1994 14:15:29 GMT" -- broken rfc850 format (no weekday)
"1994-02-03 14:15:29 -0100" -- ISO 8601 format
"1994-02-03 14:15:29" -- zone is optional
"1994-02-03" -- only date
"1994-02-03T14:15:29" -- Use T as separator
"19940203T141529Z" -- ISO 8601 compact format
"19940203" -- only date
24/Aug/1997 perl 5.005, patch 03 1
lib::HTTP::DateUser Contributed Perl Documentatlib::HTTP::Date(3)
"08-Feb-94" -- old rfc850 HTTP format (no weekday, no time)
"08-Feb-1994" -- broken rfc850 HTTP format (no weekday, no time)
"09 Feb 1994" -- proposed new HTTP format (no weekday, no time)
"03/Feb/1994" -- common logfile format (no time, no offset)
"Feb 3 1994" -- Unix 'ls -l' format
"Feb 3 17:03" -- Unix 'ls -l' format
"11-15-96 03:52PM" -- Windows 'dir' format
The parser ignores leading and trailing whitespace. It
also allow the seconds to be missing and the month to be
numerical in most formats.
The str2time() function takes an optional second argument
that specifies the default time zone to use when
converting the date. This zone specification should be
numerical (like "-0800" or "+0100") or "GMT". This
parameter is ignored if the zone is specified in the date
string itself. It this parameter is missing, and the date
string format does not contain any zone specification then
the local time zone is assumed.
If the year is missing, then we assume that the date is
the first matching date before current time.
BUGS
Non-numerical time zones (like MET, PST) are all treated
like GMT. Do not use them. HTTP does not use them.
The str2time() function has been told how to parse far too
many formats. This makes the module name misleading. To
be sure it is really misleading you can also import the
time2iso() and time2isoz() functions. They work like
time2str() but produce ISO-8601 formated strings
(YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss).
COPYRIGHT
Copyright 1995-1997, Gisle Aas
This library is free software; you can redistribute it
and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.
24/Aug/1997 perl 5.005, patch 03 2
