NAME

       Date::Parse - Parse date strings into time values

SYNOPSIS

               use Date::Parse;

               $time = str2time($date);

               ($ss,$mm,$hh,$day,$month,$year,$zone) = strptime($date);

DESCRIPTION

       "Date::Parse" provides two routines for parsing date strings into time values.

       str2time(DATE [, ZONE])
           "str2time" parses "DATE" and returns a unix time value, or undef upon failure.
           "ZONE", if given, specifies the timezone to assume when parsing if the date string
           does not specify a timezone.

       strptime(DATE [, ZONE])
           "strptime" takes the same arguments as str2time but returns an array of values
           "($ss,$mm,$hh,$day,$month,$year,$zone)". Elements are only defined if they could be
           extracted from the date string. The $zone element is the timezone offset in seconds
           from GMT. An empty array is returned upon failure.

MULTI-LANGUAGE SUPPORT

       Date::Parse is capable of parsing dates in several languages, these include English,
       French, German and Italian.

               $lang = Date::Language->new('German');
               $lang->str2time("25 Jun 1996 21:09:55 +0100");

EXAMPLE DATES

       Below is a sample list of dates that are known to be parsable with Date::Parse

        1995:01:24T09:08:17.1823213           ISO-8601
        1995-01-24T09:08:17.1823213
        Wed, 16 Jun 94 07:29:35 CST           Comma and day name are optional
        Thu, 13 Oct 94 10:13:13 -0700
        Wed, 9 Nov 1994 09:50:32 -0500 (EST)  Text in ()'s will be ignored.
        21 dec 17:05                          Will be parsed in the current time zone
        21-dec 17:05
        21/dec 17:05
        21/dec/93 17:05
        1999 10:02:18 "GMT"
        16 Nov 94 22:28:20 PST

LIMITATION

       Date::Parse uses Time::Local internally, so is limited to only parsing dates which result
       in valid values for Time::Local::timelocal. This generally means dates between 1901-12-17
       00:00:00 GMT and 2038-01-16 23:59:59 GMT

BUGS

       When both the month and the date are specified in the date as numbers they are always
       parsed assuming that the month number comes before the date. This is the usual format used
       in American dates.

       The reason why it is like this and not dynamic is that it must be deterministic. Several
       people have suggested using the current locale, but this will not work as the date being
       parsed may not be in the format of the current locale.

       My plans to address this, which will be in a future release, is to allow the programmer to
       state what order they want these values parsed in.

AUTHOR

       Graham Barr <gbarr@pobox.com>

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright (c) 1995-2009 Graham Barr. This program is free software; you can redistribute
       it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.