perl date comparison

I apologize in advance for not understanding the underlying ways perl works. I'm just trying to keep it simple! Given the following:


my $string1 = localtime(time);
my $date1 = ParseDate($string1);

my $string2 = iwpt_dcr_value('alerts.ExpireDate');
my $date2 = ParseDate($string2);

my $flag = Date_Cmp($date1, $date2);

The comparison doesn't work properly. Why? Well I discovered that $date2 never receives a value.

$string1 = Tue Jan 23 08:29:09 2007
$date1 = 2007012308:29:09
$string2 = 12-17-2006
$date2 = empty

Am I using the ParseDate and/or Date_Cmp functions incorrectly?

-Dave

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Comments

Pawan

Hi,

I think the Date_Cmp($date1, $date2); will work only if you have the similar format for comparison, try with the same format for $string2 as that of $string1 .

Thanks,
Pawan

djo2112

OK, Good!

Does any know the super-secret perl formatting directive for dates? ...and how to properly construct them.

In thinking about Pawan's reply, it is a date I'm reading from the DCR and I'd like to compare to todays date, not todays date and time.

The Date: Smiley Frustrated

imple generates an error when I try to use in in my .tpl.

-Dave

Valentine

$string1 = Tue Jan 23 08:29:09 2007
$date1 = 2007012308:29:09
$string2 = 12-17-2006
$date2 = empty

Am I using the ParseDate and/or Date_Cmp functions incorrectly?

-Dave

Looking at the Date::Manip perldoc, the date has to be in the ISO 8601 format. MM-DD-YYYY or DD-MM-YYYY is not on the list.

You would have to massage it first.

ISCBorisB

OK, Good!

Does any know the super-secret perl formatting directive for dates? ...and how to properly construct them.

In thinking about Pawan's reply, it is a date I'm reading from the DCR and I'd like to compare to todays date, not todays date and time.

The Date:imple generates an error when I try to use in in my .tpl.

-Dave

This post has been removed

Adam Stoller

OK, Good!

Does any know the super-secret perl formatting directive for dates? ...and how to properly construct them.

In thinking about Pawan's reply, it is a date I'm reading from the DCR and I'd like to compare to todays date, not todays date and time.

The Date:imple generates an error when I try to use in in my .tpl.

-Dave

Based on other posts in this thread, which provides an assumption of the value you are retrieving from the DCR - you could probably do something like this:

use Date::Format;

my $string1 = time2str("%Y%m%d", time);
my $string2 = "12-17-2006";
if ($string2 =~ m|^(\d{1,2})-(\d{1,2})-(\d{4})$|){
    # assumes M-D-YYYY format
    $string2 = sprintf("%4d%02d%02d", $3, $1, $2);
}
my $flag = ($string1 < $string2) ? -1 : ($string1 == $string2) ? 0 : 1;
# simple verification
printf("$string1 is %s than $string2\n",
       ($flag < 0) ? "less" : "equal or greater");

The above code does not need Date::Manip - just Date::Format. It assumes the format of string2 is month-day-year and allows for the possibility of month and day not being zero-padded (if you're sure they will always be zero-padded change the {1,2} to just {2} in the above code)