CODEWITHSUNDEEP
perldatetimeperl-module
Arav
Arav

Reputation: 5247

parsing date string in perl

I am trying to check whether a variable $test contains a valid date format by attempting to parse it with Date::Manip. It works as expected when the format is 'YYYY/MM/DD'. If I change the format to 'DD/MM/YYYY' (my $test="20/4/2012") it's not working properly. I tried a config function for setting to uk date format but still it didn't work. 

use Date::Manip qw(ParseDate );
my $test="20_4_2012";
#my $test="2012_4_20";

$test =~ s/_/\//g;

print $test;

$date=ParseDate($test);

if(!$date) {
  print "baddate : $date\n";
}

else {
  print "Guddate: $date\n";
}

Upvotes: 2

Views: 2703

Answers (3)

James Green
James Green

Reputation: 1763

Hopefully you've already found your solution :-)

But for the benefit of anyone passing through looking for some date parsing tools for Perl, I can highly recommend the core module Time::Piece -- it's insanely good at working out what you meant from any old date string.

The real answer to your specific question is "it depends what you mean by valid" of course.

Upvotes: 1

Alan Curry
Alan Curry

Reputation: 14741

What did your config function call look like? I can get your script to work by adding this:

Date_Init("DateFormat=non-US");

before the ParseDate. (And also adding Date_Init to the import list in the use)

Upvotes: 1

zellio
zellio

Reputation: 32534

You can do this using the Time::ParseDate which allows you to specify UK in it's arguments to the parser function.

use Time::ParseDate; 

my $test="20/4/2012";

$time = parsedate($test, UK => 1);

Upvotes: 1

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