How do I convert a date time to epoch time unix time seconds since 1970 in Perl

Question

Given a date time as an array of  year  month  day  hour  minute  second   how would you convert it to epoch time  i e   the number of seconds since 1970-01-01 00 00 00 GMT   Bonus question  If given the date time as a string  how would you first parse it into the  y m d h m s  array

User · Answer

There are many Date manipulation modules on CPAN  My particular favourite is DateTime and you can use the strptime modules to parse dates in arbitrary formats  There are also many DateTime  Format modules on CPAN for handling specialised date formats  but strptime is the most generic

User · Answer

Get Date  Manip from CPAN  then   use Date  Manip   string    18-Sep-2008 20 09     or a wide range of other date formats  unix time   UnixDate  ParseDate  string     s       edit   Date  Manip is big and slow  but very flexible in parsing  and it s pure perl   Use it if you re in a hurry when you re writing code  and you know you won t be in a hurry when you re running it   e g   Use it to parse command line options once on start-up  but don t use it parsing large amounts of data on a busy web server   See the authors comments    Thanks to the author of the first comment below

User · Answer

Possibly one of the better examples of  There s More Than One Way To Do It   with or without the help of CPAN   If you have control over what you get passed as a  date time   I d suggest going the DateTime route  either by using a specific Date  Time  Format subclass  or using DateTime  Format  Strptime if there isn t one supporting your wacky date format  see the datetime FAQ for more details   In general  Date  Time is the way to go if you want to do anything serious with the result  few classes on CPAN are quite as anal-retentive and obsessively accurate   If you re expecting weird freeform stuff  throw it at Date  Parse s str2time   method  which ll get you a seconds-since-epoch value you can then have your wicked way with  without the overhead of Date  Manip

User · Answer

Possibly one of the better examples of  There s More Than One Way To Do It   with or without the help of CPAN   If you have control over what you get passed as a  date time   I d suggest going the DateTime route  either by using a specific Date  Time  Format subclass  or using DateTime  Format  Strptime if there isn t one supporting your wacky date format  see the datetime FAQ for more details   In general  Date  Time is the way to go if you want to do anything serious with the result  few classes on CPAN are quite as anal-retentive and obsessively accurate   If you re expecting weird freeform stuff  throw it at Date  Parse s str2time   method  which ll get you a seconds-since-epoch value you can then have your wicked way with  without the overhead of Date  Manip

User · Answer

There are many Date manipulation modules on CPAN  My particular favourite is DateTime and you can use the strptime modules to parse dates in arbitrary formats  There are also many DateTime  Format modules on CPAN for handling specialised date formats  but strptime is the most generic

User · Answer

If you re just looking for a command-line utility  i e   not something that will get called from other functions   try out this script  It assumes the existence of GNU date  present on pretty much any Linux system        usr bin perl -w  use strict         join       ARGV           lt STDIN gt    chomp   if      d             print scalar localtime         print   n     else       exec  date -d        s       Here s how it works     Time now 1221763842    Time yesterday 1221677444    Time 1221677444 Wed Sep 17 11 50 44 2008    Time  12 30pm jan 4 1987  536790600    Time  9am 8 weeks ago  1216915200

User · Answer

My favorite datetime parser is DateTime  Format  ISO8601  Once you ve got that working  you ll have a DateTime object  easily convertable to epoch seconds with epoch

User · Answer

A filter converting any dates in various ISO-related formats  and who d use anything else after reading the writings of the Mighty Kuhn   on standard input to seconds-since-the-epoch time on standard output might serve to illustrate both parts   martind whitewater    cat  which isoToEpoch     usr bin perl -w use strict  use Time  Piece    sudo apt-get install libtime-piece-perl while   lt  gt         date --iso s      2007-02-15T18 25 42-0800     Other matched formats      2007-02-15 13 50 29  UTC-0800      2007-02-15 13 50 29  UTC-08 00    s   d 4 - d 2 - d 2   T    d 2   d 2   d 2        d          UTC      -  d 2     00    Time  Piece- gt strptime   1    Y- m- d 2 H  M  S  - gt epoch -  defined   3     3   3600   0  eg    print    martind whitewater

User · Answer

There are many Date manipulation modules on CPAN  My particular favourite is DateTime and you can use the strptime modules to parse dates in arbitrary formats  There are also many DateTime  Format modules on CPAN for handling specialised date formats  but strptime is the most generic

User · Answer

This is the simplest way to get unix time   use Time  Local  timelocal  second  minute  hour  day  month-1  year     Note the reverse order of the arguments and that January is month 0  For many more options  see the DateTime module from CPAN     As for parsing  see the Date  Parse module from CPAN   If you really need to get fancy with date parsing  the Date  Manip may be helpful  though its own documentation warns you away from it since it carries a lot of baggage  it knows things like common business holidays  for example  and other solutions are much faster   If you happen to know something about the format of the date times you ll be parsing then a simple regular expression may suffice but you re probably better off using an appropriate CPAN module   For example  if you know the dates will always be in YMDHMS order  use the CPAN module DateTime  Format  ISO8601     For my own reference  if nothing else  below is a function I use for an application where I know the dates will always be in YMDHMS order with all or part of the  HMS  part optional   It accepts any delimiters  eg   2009-02-15  or  2009 02 15     It returns the corresponding unix time  seconds since 1970-01-01 00 00 00 GMT  or -1 if it couldn t parse it  which means you better be sure you ll never legitimately need to parse the date 1969-12-31 23 59 59    It also presumes two-digit years XX up to  69  refer to  20XX   otherwise  19XX   eg   50-02-15  means 2050-02-15 but  75-02-15  means 1975-02-15    use Time  Local   sub parsedate      my  s          my  year   month   day   hour   minute   second      if  s    m   s   d 1 4   W 0   d 1 2   W 0   d 1 2   W 0                     d 0 2   W 0   d 0 2   W 0   d 0 2   x         year    1    month    2     day    3       hour    4    minute    5    second    6       hour    0    minute    0    second    0     defaults       year     year lt 100     year lt 70   2000  year   1900  year     year       return timelocal  second  minute  hour  day  month-1  year           return -1

User · Answer

This is the simplest way to get unix time   use Time  Local  timelocal  second  minute  hour  day  month-1  year     Note the reverse order of the arguments and that January is month 0  For many more options  see the DateTime module from CPAN     As for parsing  see the Date  Parse module from CPAN   If you really need to get fancy with date parsing  the Date  Manip may be helpful  though its own documentation warns you away from it since it carries a lot of baggage  it knows things like common business holidays  for example  and other solutions are much faster   If you happen to know something about the format of the date times you ll be parsing then a simple regular expression may suffice but you re probably better off using an appropriate CPAN module   For example  if you know the dates will always be in YMDHMS order  use the CPAN module DateTime  Format  ISO8601     For my own reference  if nothing else  below is a function I use for an application where I know the dates will always be in YMDHMS order with all or part of the  HMS  part optional   It accepts any delimiters  eg   2009-02-15  or  2009 02 15     It returns the corresponding unix time  seconds since 1970-01-01 00 00 00 GMT  or -1 if it couldn t parse it  which means you better be sure you ll never legitimately need to parse the date 1969-12-31 23 59 59    It also presumes two-digit years XX up to  69  refer to  20XX   otherwise  19XX   eg   50-02-15  means 2050-02-15 but  75-02-15  means 1975-02-15    use Time  Local   sub parsedate      my  s          my  year   month   day   hour   minute   second      if  s    m   s   d 1 4   W 0   d 1 2   W 0   d 1 2   W 0                     d 0 2   W 0   d 0 2   W 0   d 0 2   x         year    1    month    2     day    3       hour    4    minute    5    second    6       hour    0    minute    0    second    0     defaults       year     year lt 100     year lt 70   2000  year   1900  year     year       return timelocal  second  minute  hour  day  month-1  year           return -1

User · Answer

Possibly one of the better examples of  There s More Than One Way To Do It   with or without the help of CPAN   If you have control over what you get passed as a  date time   I d suggest going the DateTime route  either by using a specific Date  Time  Format subclass  or using DateTime  Format  Strptime if there isn t one supporting your wacky date format  see the datetime FAQ for more details   In general  Date  Time is the way to go if you want to do anything serious with the result  few classes on CPAN are quite as anal-retentive and obsessively accurate   If you re expecting weird freeform stuff  throw it at Date  Parse s str2time   method  which ll get you a seconds-since-epoch value you can then have your wicked way with  without the overhead of Date  Manip

User · Answer

For further reference  a one liner that can be applied in  for example     bin sh scripts   EPOCH   perl -e  use Time  Local  print timelocal    SEC      MIN      HOUR      DAY      MONTH      YEAR       n         Just remember to avoid octal values

User · Answer

If you re using the DateTime module  you can call the epoch   method on a DateTime object  since that s what you think of as unix time   Using DateTimes allows you to convert fairly easily from epoch  to date objects   Alternativly  localtime and gmtime will convert an epoch into an array containing day month and year  and timelocal and timegm from the Time  Local module will do the opposite  converting an array of time elements  seconds  minutes       days  months etc   into an epoch

User · Answer

To parse a date  look at Date  Parse in CPAN

User · Answer

If you re just looking for a command-line utility  i e   not something that will get called from other functions   try out this script  It assumes the existence of GNU date  present on pretty much any Linux system        usr bin perl -w  use strict         join       ARGV           lt STDIN gt    chomp   if      d             print scalar localtime         print   n     else       exec  date -d        s       Here s how it works     Time now 1221763842    Time yesterday 1221677444    Time 1221677444 Wed Sep 17 11 50 44 2008    Time  12 30pm jan 4 1987  536790600    Time  9am 8 weeks ago  1216915200

User · Answer

There are many Date manipulation modules on CPAN  My particular favourite is DateTime and you can use the strptime modules to parse dates in arbitrary formats  There are also many DateTime  Format modules on CPAN for handling specialised date formats  but strptime is the most generic

User · Answer

If you re using the DateTime module  you can call the epoch   method on a DateTime object  since that s what you think of as unix time   Using DateTimes allows you to convert fairly easily from epoch  to date objects   Alternativly  localtime and gmtime will convert an epoch into an array containing day month and year  and timelocal and timegm from the Time  Local module will do the opposite  converting an array of time elements  seconds  minutes       days  months etc   into an epoch

User · Answer

I know this is an old question  but thought I would offer another answer    Time  Piece is core as of Perl 5 9 5   This allows parsing of time in arbitrary formats via the strptime method    e g    my  t   Time  Piece- gt strptime  Sunday 3rd Nov  1943                                   A  drd  b   Y      The useful part is - because it s an overloaded object  you can use it for numeric comparisons   e g    if    t  lt  time        do something     Or if you access it in a string context   print  t   n      You get   Wed Nov  3 00 00 00 1943   There s a bunch of accessor methods that allow for some assorted other useful time based transforms  https   metacpan org pod Time  Piece

User · Answer

To parse a date  look at Date  Parse in CPAN

User · Answer

I m using a very old O S that I don t dare install libraries onto  so here s what I use    MonthMatrix   Jan  0  Feb  31  Mar  59  Apr  90  May  120  Jun  151  Jul  181  Aug  212  Sep  243  Oct  273  Nov  304  Dec  334    LeapYearCount int  YearFourDigits 4    EpochDayNumber  MonthMatrix  MonthThreeLetters   if   LeapYearCount    YearFourDigits 4     if   EpochDayNumber lt 32     EpochDayNumber--      EpochDayNumber   YearFourDigits-1970  365  LeapYearCount  EpochDayNumber  DayAsNumber-493   TimeOfDaySeconds   HourAsNumber 3600    MinutesAsNumber 60   SecondsAsNumber   ActualEpochTime   EpochDayNumber 86400   TimeOfDaySeconds    The input variables are    MonthThreeLetters  DayAsNumber  YearFourDigits  HourAsNumber  MinutesAsNumber  SecondsAsNumber      which should be self-explanatory   The input variables  of course  assume GMT  UTC    The output variable is   ActualEpochTime     Often  I only need  EpochDayNumber  so that s why that otherwise superfluous variable sits on its own    I ve used this formula for years with nary an error

User · Answer

I m using a very old O S that I don t dare install libraries onto  so here s what I use    MonthMatrix   Jan  0  Feb  31  Mar  59  Apr  90  May  120  Jun  151  Jul  181  Aug  212  Sep  243  Oct  273  Nov  304  Dec  334    LeapYearCount int  YearFourDigits 4    EpochDayNumber  MonthMatrix  MonthThreeLetters   if   LeapYearCount    YearFourDigits 4     if   EpochDayNumber lt 32     EpochDayNumber--      EpochDayNumber   YearFourDigits-1970  365  LeapYearCount  EpochDayNumber  DayAsNumber-493   TimeOfDaySeconds   HourAsNumber 3600    MinutesAsNumber 60   SecondsAsNumber   ActualEpochTime   EpochDayNumber 86400   TimeOfDaySeconds    The input variables are    MonthThreeLetters  DayAsNumber  YearFourDigits  HourAsNumber  MinutesAsNumber  SecondsAsNumber      which should be self-explanatory   The input variables  of course  assume GMT  UTC    The output variable is   ActualEpochTime     Often  I only need  EpochDayNumber  so that s why that otherwise superfluous variable sits on its own    I ve used this formula for years with nary an error

User · Answer

ENV TZ   GMT   POSIX  tzset     time   POSIX  mktime  s  m  h  d  mo-1  y-1900

User · Answer

If you re using the DateTime module  you can call the epoch   method on a DateTime object  since that s what you think of as unix time   Using DateTimes allows you to convert fairly easily from epoch  to date objects   Alternativly  localtime and gmtime will convert an epoch into an array containing day month and year  and timelocal and timegm from the Time  Local module will do the opposite  converting an array of time elements  seconds  minutes       days  months etc   into an epoch

User · Answer

If you re just looking for a command-line utility  i e   not something that will get called from other functions   try out this script  It assumes the existence of GNU date  present on pretty much any Linux system        usr bin perl -w  use strict         join       ARGV           lt STDIN gt    chomp   if      d             print scalar localtime         print   n     else       exec  date -d        s       Here s how it works     Time now 1221763842    Time yesterday 1221677444    Time 1221677444 Wed Sep 17 11 50 44 2008    Time  12 30pm jan 4 1987  536790600    Time  9am 8 weeks ago  1216915200

User · Answer

A filter converting any dates in various ISO-related formats  and who d use anything else after reading the writings of the Mighty Kuhn   on standard input to seconds-since-the-epoch time on standard output might serve to illustrate both parts   martind whitewater    cat  which isoToEpoch     usr bin perl -w use strict  use Time  Piece    sudo apt-get install libtime-piece-perl while   lt  gt         date --iso s      2007-02-15T18 25 42-0800     Other matched formats      2007-02-15 13 50 29  UTC-0800      2007-02-15 13 50 29  UTC-08 00    s   d 4 - d 2 - d 2   T    d 2   d 2   d 2        d          UTC      -  d 2     00    Time  Piece- gt strptime   1    Y- m- d 2 H  M  S  - gt epoch -  defined   3     3   3600   0  eg    print    martind whitewater

User · Answer

Get Date  Manip from CPAN  then   use Date  Manip   string    18-Sep-2008 20 09     or a wide range of other date formats  unix time   UnixDate  ParseDate  string     s       edit   Date  Manip is big and slow  but very flexible in parsing  and it s pure perl   Use it if you re in a hurry when you re writing code  and you know you won t be in a hurry when you re running it   e g   Use it to parse command line options once on start-up  but don t use it parsing large amounts of data on a busy web server   See the authors comments    Thanks to the author of the first comment below

User · Answer

A filter converting any dates in various ISO-related formats  and who d use anything else after reading the writings of the Mighty Kuhn   on standard input to seconds-since-the-epoch time on standard output might serve to illustrate both parts   martind whitewater    cat  which isoToEpoch     usr bin perl -w use strict  use Time  Piece    sudo apt-get install libtime-piece-perl while   lt  gt         date --iso s      2007-02-15T18 25 42-0800     Other matched formats      2007-02-15 13 50 29  UTC-0800      2007-02-15 13 50 29  UTC-08 00    s   d 4 - d 2 - d 2   T    d 2   d 2   d 2        d          UTC      -  d 2     00    Time  Piece- gt strptime   1    Y- m- d 2 H  M  S  - gt epoch -  defined   3     3   3600   0  eg    print    martind whitewater

User · Answer

For further reference  a one liner that can be applied in  for example     bin sh scripts   EPOCH   perl -e  use Time  Local  print timelocal    SEC      MIN      HOUR      DAY      MONTH      YEAR       n         Just remember to avoid octal values

User · Answer

If you re using the DateTime module  you can call the epoch   method on a DateTime object  since that s what you think of as unix time   Using DateTimes allows you to convert fairly easily from epoch  to date objects   Alternativly  localtime and gmtime will convert an epoch into an array containing day month and year  and timelocal and timegm from the Time  Local module will do the opposite  converting an array of time elements  seconds  minutes       days  months etc   into an epoch

User · Answer

I know this is an old question  but thought I would offer another answer    Time  Piece is core as of Perl 5 9 5   This allows parsing of time in arbitrary formats via the strptime method    e g    my  t   Time  Piece- gt strptime  Sunday 3rd Nov  1943                                   A  drd  b   Y      The useful part is - because it s an overloaded object  you can use it for numeric comparisons   e g    if    t  lt  time        do something     Or if you access it in a string context   print  t   n      You get   Wed Nov  3 00 00 00 1943   There s a bunch of accessor methods that allow for some assorted other useful time based transforms  https   metacpan org pod Time  Piece

User · Answer

Get Date  Manip from CPAN  then   use Date  Manip   string    18-Sep-2008 20 09     or a wide range of other date formats  unix time   UnixDate  ParseDate  string     s       edit   Date  Manip is big and slow  but very flexible in parsing  and it s pure perl   Use it if you re in a hurry when you re writing code  and you know you won t be in a hurry when you re running it   e g   Use it to parse command line options once on start-up  but don t use it parsing large amounts of data on a busy web server   See the authors comments    Thanks to the author of the first comment below

User · Answer

To parse a date  look at Date  Parse in CPAN

User · Answer

If you re just looking for a command-line utility  i e   not something that will get called from other functions   try out this script  It assumes the existence of GNU date  present on pretty much any Linux system        usr bin perl -w  use strict         join       ARGV           lt STDIN gt    chomp   if      d             print scalar localtime         print   n     else       exec  date -d        s       Here s how it works     Time now 1221763842    Time yesterday 1221677444    Time 1221677444 Wed Sep 17 11 50 44 2008    Time  12 30pm jan 4 1987  536790600    Time  9am 8 weeks ago  1216915200

User · Answer

This is the simplest way to get unix time   use Time  Local  timelocal  second  minute  hour  day  month-1  year     Note the reverse order of the arguments and that January is month 0  For many more options  see the DateTime module from CPAN     As for parsing  see the Date  Parse module from CPAN   If you really need to get fancy with date parsing  the Date  Manip may be helpful  though its own documentation warns you away from it since it carries a lot of baggage  it knows things like common business holidays  for example  and other solutions are much faster   If you happen to know something about the format of the date times you ll be parsing then a simple regular expression may suffice but you re probably better off using an appropriate CPAN module   For example  if you know the dates will always be in YMDHMS order  use the CPAN module DateTime  Format  ISO8601     For my own reference  if nothing else  below is a function I use for an application where I know the dates will always be in YMDHMS order with all or part of the  HMS  part optional   It accepts any delimiters  eg   2009-02-15  or  2009 02 15     It returns the corresponding unix time  seconds since 1970-01-01 00 00 00 GMT  or -1 if it couldn t parse it  which means you better be sure you ll never legitimately need to parse the date 1969-12-31 23 59 59    It also presumes two-digit years XX up to  69  refer to  20XX   otherwise  19XX   eg   50-02-15  means 2050-02-15 but  75-02-15  means 1975-02-15    use Time  Local   sub parsedate      my  s          my  year   month   day   hour   minute   second      if  s    m   s   d 1 4   W 0   d 1 2   W 0   d 1 2   W 0                     d 0 2   W 0   d 0 2   W 0   d 0 2   x         year    1    month    2     day    3       hour    4    minute    5    second    6       hour    0    minute    0    second    0     defaults       year     year lt 100     year lt 70   2000  year   1900  year     year       return timelocal  second  minute  hour  day  month-1  year           return -1

User · Answer

My favorite datetime parser is DateTime  Format  ISO8601  Once you ve got that working  you ll have a DateTime object  easily convertable to epoch seconds with epoch

User · Answer

Get Date  Manip from CPAN  then   use Date  Manip   string    18-Sep-2008 20 09     or a wide range of other date formats  unix time   UnixDate  ParseDate  string     s       edit   Date  Manip is big and slow  but very flexible in parsing  and it s pure perl   Use it if you re in a hurry when you re writing code  and you know you won t be in a hurry when you re running it   e g   Use it to parse command line options once on start-up  but don t use it parsing large amounts of data on a busy web server   See the authors comments    Thanks to the author of the first comment below

User · Answer

A filter converting any dates in various ISO-related formats  and who d use anything else after reading the writings of the Mighty Kuhn   on standard input to seconds-since-the-epoch time on standard output might serve to illustrate both parts   martind whitewater    cat  which isoToEpoch     usr bin perl -w use strict  use Time  Piece    sudo apt-get install libtime-piece-perl while   lt  gt         date --iso s      2007-02-15T18 25 42-0800     Other matched formats      2007-02-15 13 50 29  UTC-0800      2007-02-15 13 50 29  UTC-08 00    s   d 4 - d 2 - d 2   T    d 2   d 2   d 2        d          UTC      -  d 2     00    Time  Piece- gt strptime   1    Y- m- d 2 H  M  S  - gt epoch -  defined   3     3   3600   0  eg    print    martind whitewater

User · Answer

To parse a date  look at Date  Parse in CPAN

User · Answer

Possibly one of the better examples of  There s More Than One Way To Do It   with or without the help of CPAN   If you have control over what you get passed as a  date time   I d suggest going the DateTime route  either by using a specific Date  Time  Format subclass  or using DateTime  Format  Strptime if there isn t one supporting your wacky date format  see the datetime FAQ for more details   In general  Date  Time is the way to go if you want to do anything serious with the result  few classes on CPAN are quite as anal-retentive and obsessively accurate   If you re expecting weird freeform stuff  throw it at Date  Parse s str2time   method  which ll get you a seconds-since-epoch value you can then have your wicked way with  without the overhead of Date  Manip

User · Answer

This is the simplest way to get unix time   use Time  Local  timelocal  second  minute  hour  day  month-1  year     Note the reverse order of the arguments and that January is month 0  For many more options  see the DateTime module from CPAN     As for parsing  see the Date  Parse module from CPAN   If you really need to get fancy with date parsing  the Date  Manip may be helpful  though its own documentation warns you away from it since it carries a lot of baggage  it knows things like common business holidays  for example  and other solutions are much faster   If you happen to know something about the format of the date times you ll be parsing then a simple regular expression may suffice but you re probably better off using an appropriate CPAN module   For example  if you know the dates will always be in YMDHMS order  use the CPAN module DateTime  Format  ISO8601     For my own reference  if nothing else  below is a function I use for an application where I know the dates will always be in YMDHMS order with all or part of the  HMS  part optional   It accepts any delimiters  eg   2009-02-15  or  2009 02 15     It returns the corresponding unix time  seconds since 1970-01-01 00 00 00 GMT  or -1 if it couldn t parse it  which means you better be sure you ll never legitimately need to parse the date 1969-12-31 23 59 59    It also presumes two-digit years XX up to  69  refer to  20XX   otherwise  19XX   eg   50-02-15  means 2050-02-15 but  75-02-15  means 1975-02-15    use Time  Local   sub parsedate      my  s          my  year   month   day   hour   minute   second      if  s    m   s   d 1 4   W 0   d 1 2   W 0   d 1 2   W 0                     d 0 2   W 0   d 0 2   W 0   d 0 2   x         year    1    month    2     day    3       hour    4    minute    5    second    6       hour    0    minute    0    second    0     defaults       year     year lt 100     year lt 70   2000  year   1900  year     year       return timelocal  second  minute  hour  day  month-1  year           return -1

User · Answer

ENV TZ   GMT   POSIX  tzset     time   POSIX  mktime  s  m  h  d  mo-1  y-1900

User · Answer

My favorite datetime parser is DateTime  Format  ISO8601  Once you ve got that working  you ll have a DateTime object  easily convertable to epoch seconds with epoch

User · Answer

My favorite datetime parser is DateTime  Format  ISO8601  Once you ve got that working  you ll have a DateTime object  easily convertable to epoch seconds with epoch

[perl] How do I convert a date/time to epoch time (unix time/seconds since 1970) in Perl?

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