Perl date comparison?

Hello all..im trying to write a perl script that will check if an extended attribute on our DCRs called "Web Expiration Date" (format MM-DD-YYYY) is less than or equal to todays date. the below code isnt working for me:

$EA = "Web Expiration Date";

($day, $month, $year) = (localtime)[3..5];
$year = $year + 1900; #got 2004
$month = $month + 1;
if ( $day <= 9 ) {
$day = "0".$day;
}
if ( $month <= 9) {
$month = "0".$month;
}
$today = $month.-$day.-$year;

foreach $file (@list) {

$cmd = 'iwextattr -g "'.$EA.'" "'.$file.'"';
$cmd2 = 'iwextattr -g "'.$EA2.'" "'.$file.'"';
$result=`$cmd`;
$result2=`$cmd2`;

my($text) = $file;
my($directory, $filename) = $text =~ m/(.*\/)(.*)$/;

if (($result <= $today) and ($result ne "")) {

etc etc

is that not a valid comparison with the dates in the MM-DD-YYYY format? thanks in advance

-------------------
World of Warcraft  Illidan/Horde

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Comments

jbonifaci

Hrm, why not use a module like Date::Manip? Buf if you do want to do a <= comparison, you'll need to have your dates in this format:

YYYYMMDD

Migrateduser

To expand on Jeff's answer, both Date::Manip and Date::Calc are included with a default TeamSite installation. Both have methods that will do what you want to do.

chuckles

Comparison should be on year-mon-day. Otherwise, cross-year comparisons will fail. Better yet, I suggest that you use the Date::Manip package you can get the docs from CPAN. It is very powerful. You can use the ParseDate method to get today's date and the date in the attribute into comparable formats and then use DateCmp. It is a much more robust solution since the ParseDate method is not picky about it's input string and you can send it almost anything (including text strings like "today" and "yesterday") and it will figure it out.

Adam Stoller

As was mentioned - you really want to compare dates in YYYYMMDD format as opposed to MM-DD-YYYY (or DD-MM-YYYY or ...) format.
You could use Date::Manip, but that's probably a bit overkill for a simple date comparison like this, instead you could probably do something similar to what you were trying, but modified as follows:$EA = "Web Expiration Date";
my @tm = localtime();
$tm[4]++;
$tm[5] += 1900;
my $today = sprintf("%4d%02d%02d", reverse(@tm[3..5]));
# gives us a YYYYMMDD format date

foreach $file (@list) {
# assuming EA value is in "MM-DD-YYYY" format
# get value and change to YYYYMMDD format
chomp($result = qx(iwextattr -g "$EA" "$file"));
$result =~ s/^(\d{2})-(\d{2})-(\d{4})$/$3$1$2/;
chomp($result2 = qx(iwextattr -g "$EA2" "$file"));
$result2 =~ s/^(\d{2})-(\d{2})-(\d{4})$/$3$1$2/;
#...
if (($result <= $today) and ($result ne "")) {
#...
}

--fish
Senior Consultant, Quotient Inc.
http://www.quotient-inc.com

Migrateduser

The simple method I can thinkof is to convert the date to delta format, and then the bigger number is the later date.

rodigz

I need to compare date in GMT format.
How should I do it?

Sun, 25 Dec 2005 09:42:31

Migrateduser

Date::Manip and Date::Calc both offer the ability to specify a time zone, however Date::Calc is somewhat lighter to use / load.

Dave

Environments:
(1,2) TS6.5, TS6.5SP1 on W2K3
(3) Vignette V7 Portal on Solaris 9

rodigz

yah correct. I'm trying to use the date comparison but giving me error unable to determine timezone

$date1=&ParseDate($string1);
$date2=&ParseDate($string2);
if ($date1 lt $date2) {
# date1 is earlier
} else {
# date2 is earlier (or the two dates are identical)
}

Migrateduser

Yeah, I've had that problem, too, but I think it's only with Date::Manip. I don't believe that Date::Calc has this issue. You can do one of two things here:

1. Perl is looking for an environment variable, TZ, on your system. I don't know which OS you're running on but you can do that, but I prefer #2...

2. Write a BEGIN block in your code which will be interpreted before any of your other code does. In this BEGIN block, set the timezone there.

There is quite a bit of documentation about this "feature" on CPAN, so I suggest looking there for supplemental material.

Dave

Environments:
(1,2) TS6.5, TS6.5SP1 on W2K3
(3) Vignette V7 Portal on Solaris 9

gzevin

I usually set $ENV{TZ} in the code, to be sure it's doing the right thing.

no issue whatsoever

Greg Zevin, Ph.D. Comp. Sc.
Independent Interwoven Consultant/Architect
Sydney, AU

rodigz

this one works.
thanks.