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convert string to date and time

Hi -

Very new to perl - have searched the questions and can't find an answer I can understand :-)

I have two varchar fields in my mysql db that contain a date and a time as strings in the following formats:

date field looks like 04/25/06

time field looks like 9:45 AM

Question is -

How can I convert these text strings into actual dates and times that perl can work with - for date and time manipulations -

thanks in advance -

Richard

star_trek

It depends on what module you use, I use Time::ParseDate
the following code would print me 2006042521:45:00

$d = "04/25/06";
$t = "9:45 PM";
print &ParseDate("$d $t");

Tintin

What sort of date/time manipulations do you want to do?

Richard Winnick

ASKER

Hi -
I am trying to "fix" some pre existing perl code that I inherited which doesn't work :-)

The problem goes like this :-)

I have a date field which has a text string like 04/25/06
I then have a time field which has a text string like 6:45 PM
I need to take these date and time strings and turn them into a time stamp field using local server time (which is PST)
I then need to adjust this timestamp to reflect the timezone the client is in - which is represented in another field as a one digit offset (0,1,2,3)

Up till now I have tried to get the year, month, day, hour, min, and am/pm by using substr() and adjusting for string length 6:45 PM vs 10:45 AM

I have then tried to use timelocal() to create the time stamp

and then try to add 12 hrs if time is pm -

I will then have to compare this timestamp to local server time and decide if an event should happen if the timestamp is less than local time -

Am getting results but they are way off -

I'm sure there has to be a more elegant and correct method of accomplishing this :-)

But after more hours than I care to remember I stuck!

thanks -

Richard

Richard Winnick

ASKER

Hi Again -

By the way I tried the time::parsedate - but get an error msg and it can't find the module

R

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

ozo

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Richard Winnick

ASKER

Hi ozo -

That is soooo cool and elegant - and it works!!

Not only have you helped me with this problem - you've shown me a standard to work towards -

thanks -

Richard