Time::Piece(3pm) Perl Programmers Reference Guide Time::Piece(3pm)NAME
Time::Piece - Object Oriented time objects
SYNOPSIS
use Time::Piece;
my $t = localtime;
print "Time is $t\n";
print "Year is ", $t->year, "\n";
DESCRIPTION
This module replaces the standard localtime and gmtime functions with
implementations that return objects. It does so in a backwards
compatible manner, so that using localtime/gmtime in the way documented
in perlfunc will still return what you expect.
The module actually implements most of an interface described by Larry
Wall on the perl5-porters mailing list here:
http://www.xray.mpe.mpg.de/mailing-lists/perl5-porters/2000-01/msg00241.html
USAGE
After importing this module, when you use localtime or gmtime in a
scalar context, rather than getting an ordinary scalar string
representing the date and time, you get a Time::Piece object, whose
stringification happens to produce the same effect as the localtime and
gmtime functions. There is also a new() constructor provided, which is
the same as localtime(), except when passed a Time::Piece object, in
which case it's a copy constructor. The following methods are available
on the object:
$t->sec # also available as $t->second
$t->min # also available as $t->minute
$t->hour # 24 hour
$t->mday # also available as $t->day_of_month
$t->mon # 1 = January
$t->_mon # 0 = January
$t->monname # Feb
$t->month # same as $t->monname
$t->fullmonth # February
$t->year # based at 0 (year 0 AD is, of course 1 BC)
$t->_year # year minus 1900
$t->yy # 2 digit year
$t->wday # 1 = Sunday
$t->_wday # 0 = Sunday
$t->day_of_week # 0 = Sunday
$t->wdayname # Tue
$t->day # same as wdayname
$t->fullday # Tuesday
$t->yday # also available as $t->day_of_year, 0 = Jan 01
$t->isdst # also available as $t->daylight_savings
$t->hms # 12:34:56
$t->hms(".") # 12.34.56
$t->time # same as $t->hms
$t->ymd # 2000-02-29
$t->date # same as $t->ymd
$t->mdy # 02-29-2000
$t->mdy("/") # 02/29/2000
$t->dmy # 29-02-2000
$t->dmy(".") # 29.02.2000
$t->datetime # 2000-02-29T12:34:56 (ISO 8601)
$t->cdate # Tue Feb 29 12:34:56 2000
"$t" # same as $t->cdate
$t->epoch # seconds since the epoch
$t->tzoffset # timezone offset in a Time::Seconds object
$t->julian_day # number of days since Julian period began
$t->mjd # modified Julian date (JD-2400000.5 days)
$t->week # week number (ISO 8601)
$t->is_leap_year # true if it its
$t->month_last_day # 28-31
$t->time_separator($s) # set the default separator (default ":")
$t->date_separator($s) # set the default separator (default "-")
$t->day_list(@days) # set the default weekdays
$t->mon_list(@days) # set the default months
$t->strftime(FORMAT) # same as POSIX::strftime (without the overhead
# of the full POSIX extension)
$t->strftime() # "Tue, 29 Feb 2000 12:34:56 GMT"
Time::Piece->strptime(STRING, FORMAT)
# see strptime man page. Creates a new
# Time::Piece object
Local Locales
Both wdayname (day) and monname (month) allow passing in a list to use
to index the name of the days against. This can be useful if you need
to implement some form of localisation without actually installing or
using locales.
my @days = qw( Dimanche Lundi Merdi Mercredi Jeudi Vendredi Samedi );
my $french_day = localtime->day(@days);
These settings can be overriden globally too:
Time::Piece::day_list(@days);
Or for months:
Time::Piece::mon_list(@months);
And locally for months:
print localtime->month(@months);
Date Calculations
It's possible to use simple addition and subtraction of objects:
use Time::Seconds;
my $seconds = $t1 - $t2;
$t1 += ONE_DAY; # add 1 day (constant from Time::Seconds)
The following are valid ($t1 and $t2 are Time::Piece objects):
$t1 - $t2; # returns Time::Seconds object
$t1 - 42; # returns Time::Piece object
$t1 + 533; # returns Time::Piece object
However adding a Time::Piece object to another Time::Piece object will
cause a runtime error.
Note that the first of the above returns a Time::Seconds object, so
while examining the object will print the number of seconds (because of
the overloading), you can also get the number of minutes, hours, days,
weeks and years in that delta, using the Time::Seconds API.
In addition to adding seconds, there are two APIs for adding months and
years:
$t->add_months(6);
$t->add_years(5);
The months and years can be negative for subtractions. Note that there
is some "strange" behaviour when adding and subtracting months at the
ends of months. Generally when the resulting month is shorter than the
starting month then the number of overlap days is added. For example
subtracting a month from 2008-03-31 will not result in 2008-02-31 as
this is an impossible date. Instead you will get 2008-03-02. This
appears to be consistent with other date manipulation tools.
Date Comparisons
Date comparisons are also possible, using the full suite of "<", ">",
"<=", ">=", "<=>", "==" and "!=".
Date Parsing
Time::Piece has a built-in strptime() function (from FreeBSD), allowing
you incredibly flexible date parsing routines. For example:
my $t = Time::Piece->strptime("Sunday 3rd Nov, 1943",
"%A %drd %b, %Y");
print $t->strftime("%a, %d %b %Y");
Outputs:
Wed, 03 Nov 1943
(see, it's even smart enough to fix my obvious date bug)
For more information see "man strptime", which should be on all unix
systems.
Alternatively look here:
http://www.unix.com/man-page/FreeBSD/3/strftime/
YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss
The ISO 8601 standard defines the date format to be YYYY-MM-DD, and the
time format to be hh:mm:ss (24 hour clock), and if combined, they
should be concatenated with date first and with a capital 'T' in front
of the time.
Week Number
The week number may be an unknown concept to some readers. The ISO
8601 standard defines that weeks begin on a Monday and week 1 of the
year is the week that includes both January 4th and the first Thursday
of the year. In other words, if the first Monday of January is the
2nd, 3rd, or 4th, the preceding days of the January are part of the
last week of the preceding year. Week numbers range from 1 to 53.
Global Overriding
Finally, it's possible to override localtime and gmtime everywhere, by
including the ':override' tag in the import list:
use Time::Piece ':override';
CAVEATS
Setting $ENV{TZ} in Threads on Win32
Note that when using perl in the default build configuration on Win32
(specifically, when perl is built with PERL_IMPLICIT_SYS), each perl
interpreter maintains its own copy of the environment and only the main
interpreter will update the process environment seen by strftime.
Therefore, if you make changes to $ENV{TZ} from inside a thread other
than the main thread then those changes will not be seen by strftime if
you subsequently call that with the %Z formatting code. You must change
$ENV{TZ} in the main thread to have the desired effect in this case
(and you must also call _tzset() in the main thread to register the
environment change).
Furthermore, remember that this caveat also applies to fork(), which is
emulated by threads on Win32.
Use of epoch seconds
This module internally uses the epoch seconds system that is provided
via the perl "time()" function and supported by "gmtime()" and
"localtime()".
If your perl does not support times larger than "2^31" seconds then
this module is likely to fail at processing dates beyond the year 2038.
There are moves afoot to fix that in perl. Alternatively use 64 bit
perl. Or if none of those are options, use the DateTime module which
has support for years well into the future and past.
AUTHOR
Matt Sergeant, matt@sergeant.org Jarkko Hietaniemi, jhi@iki.fi (while
creating Time::Piece for core perl)
License
This module is free software, you may distribute it under the same
terms as Perl.
SEE ALSO
The excellent Calendar FAQ at
http://www.tondering.dk/claus/calendar.html
BUGS
The test harness leaves much to be desired. Patches welcome.
perl v5.16.2 2012-10-11 Time::Piece(3pm)
