Convert timestamp to epoch time and calculate hours plus conversion backwards

#! /usr/bin/perl
my @time = localtime(time);
print "@time\n";

print scalar localtime(time);

You should be able to use the perl DateTime module to do what you want

Here is a quick example that takes a date string in the format you specify and prints the difference in hours from the current datetime.

use DateTime;

$datestring = "15.06.2005:15:30:30";
$datestring =~ m#(\d{2})\.(\d{2})\.(\d{4})\:(\d{2})\:(\d{2})\:(\d{2})#;
my $dt = DateTime -> new ( year => $3, month => $2, day => $1,
				hour => $4, minute => $5, second => $6);
				
$dt->add(hours => 4);

my $cmp = DateTime->now()-$dt;
print $cmp->in_units('hours');

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Hi sarathy_sri,

I only receive an error using that code ==> syntax error: `(' unexpected

@deiaccord.

I fear perl is not the best soltion as the Perl DateTime Package is not installed on my Solaris machine. The solution needs to be universal in order to be applied on various hosts.

Any idea how to solve it differently? In Ksh maybe?

Otherwise you solution looks promising without being able to test it! Sorry!

Hi deiaaccord,

thanks for your solution. I compiled a small perl script using your code and invoke it from within my shell script. However, I cannot pass a parameter to perl in order to bind $datestring.


In ksh:

/tmp/epoch.pl $LS

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while LS equals "15.06.2005:15:30:30"

In Perl:

$datestring = $LS;

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Do you have a hint?

It seems to work with:

$datestring = $ENV{'LS'};

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Well unfortunately this works only if I export the Variable in ksh but not within the script.
Thus, the question is still open.

Glad you got it working, you could have also set it with the first argument to the script if you want to make it a more re-usable script

$datestring = $ARGV[0];

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Thanks a lot! Just what I needed! I appreciate your hint regarding passing the variable from ksh to perl with ARGV[n]!