PARSEDATE(3) BSD Library Functions Manual PARSEDATE(3)NAMEparsedate — date parsing function
LIBRARY
System Utilities Library (libutil, -lutil)
SYNOPSIS
#include <util.h>
time_t
parsedate(const char *datestr, const time_t *time, const int *tzoff);
DESCRIPTION
The parsedate() function parses a datetime from datestr described in eng‐
lish relative to an optional time point and an optional timezone offset
in seconds specified in tzoff. If either time or tzoff are NULL, then
the current time and timezone offset are used.
The datestr is a sequence of white-space separated items. The white-
space is optional the concatenated items are not ambiguous. An empty
datestr is equivalent to midnight today (the beginning of this day).
The following words have the indicated numeric meanings: last = -1, this
= 0, first, next, or one = 1, second is unused so that it is not confused
with “seconds”, two = 2, third or three = 3, fourth or four = 4, fifth or
five = 5, sixth or six = 6, seventh or seven = 7, eighth or eight = 8,
ninth or nine = 9, tenth or ten = 10, eleventh or eleven = 11, twelfth or
twoelve = 12.
The following words are recognized in English only: AM, PM, a.m., p.m.
The months: january, february, march, april, may, june, july, august,
september, sept, october, november, december,
The days of the week: sunday, monday, tuesday, tues, wednesday, wednes,
thursday, thur, thurs, friday, saturday.
Time units: year, month, fortnight, week, day, hour, minute, min, second,
sec, tomorrow, yesterday.
Timezone names: gmt, ut, utc, wet, bst, wat, at, ast, adt, est, edt, cst,
cdt, mst, mdt, pst, pdt, yst, ydt, hst, hdt, cat, ahst, nt, idlw, cet,
met, mewt, mest, swt, sst, fwt, fst, eet, bt, zp4, zp5, zp6, wast, wadt,
cct, jst, east, eadt, gst, nzt, nzst, nzdt, idle.
A variety of unambiguous dates are recognized:
69-09-10 For years between 69-99 we assume 1900+ and for years
between 0-68 we assume 2000+.
2006-11-17 An ISO-8601 date.
10/1/2000 October 10, 2000; the common US format.
20 Jun 1994
23jun2001
1-sep-06 Other common abbreviations.
1/11 the year can be omitted
As well as times:
10:01
10:12pm
12:11:01.000012
12:21-0500
Relative items are also supported:
-1 month
last friday
one week ago
this thursday
next sunday
+2 years
Seconds since epoch (also known as UNIX time) are also supported:
@735275209 Tue Apr 20 03:06:49 UTC 1993
RETURN VALUESparsedate() returns the number of seconds passed since the Epoch, or -1
if the date could not be parsed properly.
SEE ALSOdate(1), eeprom(8)HISTORY
The parser used in parsedate() was originally written by Steven M.
Bellovin while at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It
was later tweaked by a couple of people on Usenet. Completely overhauled
by Rich $alz and Jim Berets in August, 1990.
The parsedate() function first appeared in NetBSD 4.0.
BUGS
1
The parsedate() function is not re-entrant or thread-safe.
2
The parsedate() function cannot compute days before the unix epoch
(19700101).
3
The parsedate() function assumes years less than 0 mean - year, years
less than 70 mean 2000 + year, years less than 100 mean 1900 + year.
BSD December 20, 2010 BSD
