Alternative to POSIX::strptime

[astroboy]

Hi

This is a follow in from Fast way to validate dates

I'm using POSIX::strptime to provide a fast way to validate a date string given a POSIX date format. While it's working absolutely billiantly for me on Linux, it won't install on Mac OS X or Winodws (or, according to the CPAN test reports, on any flavour of UNIX)

Does someone know of an alternative? It needs to be quick because I'm processing lots of data, so anything based on DateTime won't cut it (oh, and it needs to understand POSIX format masks)

[dsheroh]

DateTime::Format::Strptime looks like it should be pretty cross-platform (162 pass/12 fail with passes on OSX and Win32) and, as a strptime implementation, I'd expect it to recognize your POSIX::strptime formats without modification.

[Anonymous Monk]

Time::Piece

[djerius]

Not quite an answer to your question, but still related...

I've uploaded a patch (rt://46888) which allows the module to compile on Solaris; this may improve compilation success on other platforms. The tests will probably fail because the module seems to have been written based on the Linux behavior.

I've discovered significant differences in how strptime behaves under OS X, Linux, and Solaris (see rt://46889 for comments on Solaris), not just in terms of whether the initial structure is initialized, but also in which fields are determined from the input string. There seems to be enough variation in how strptime is implemented that in my opinion it's not very useful in cross-platform code.

[doug]

I've kinda given up on "validation" of dates. I usually use something like

use Date::Manip;
my $formatted_date = UnixDate $date, $PREFERRED_FORMAT;

If Date::Manip::UnixDate() can figure out what was provided enough to produce a date in the format that I wish, then it was good enough. It isn't the fastest approach in the world, but it has served me well.

- doug

[davorg]

What are you trying to install? There shouldn't be any need to install anything.

POSIX.pm has been a part of the standard Perl installation since the earliest versions of Perl 5. If you have Perl 5 installed then you already have POSIX.pm and therefore POSIX::strptime.

[djerius]

The 5.10.0 POSIX module doesn't look like it supplies strptime:

% perl -v

This is perl, v5.10.0 built for x86_64-linux-gnu-thread-multi
[...]

% perl -MPOSIX=strptime
"strptime" is not exported by the POSIX module
Can't continue after import errors at /usr/lib/perl/5.10/POSIX.pm line
+ 28
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted.

% perl -MPOSIX -le 'print POSIX->VERSION'
1.13

[davorg]

You're right. POSIX has never included strptime. It includes strftime. I apologise for being confused by the original question :-)

[Anonymous Monk]

Time::Piece does provides strptime

[astroboy]

Thanks to all who replied. Time::Piece seems to be working or me now...