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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 timezome.

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 are English, French, German and Italian. Changing the language is done via a static method call, for example 

        Date::Parse->language('German');

will cause Date::Parse to attempt to parse any subsequent dates in German.

This is only a first pass, I am considering changing this to be 

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

I am open to suggestions on this.

AUTHOR

Graham Barr

REVISION

$Revision: 2.6 $

COPYRIGHT

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