Re: Comparing dates in Perl

[ikegami]

use strict;
use warnings;
use feature qw( say );

use DateTime                   qw( );
use DateTime::Format::Strptime qw( );

my $format = DateTime::Format::Strptime->new(
   pattern   => '%d-%m-%Y',
   time_zone => 'local',
   on_error  => 'croak',
);

my $target = $format->parse_datetime('05-08-2012');
my $today = DateTime->today( time_zone => 'local' );

say $today->delta_days($target)->in_units('days');  # 123

[sundialsvc4]

++

Most of the time, I find myself coming back to this module because it’s an abstract data type.   An instance of the object, once loaded with a particular date by whatever means, “is an” instance of that date.   It is completely opaque and it just does the right thing.   Since you often find yourself doing a series of not-quite trivial things with date/time values, this is a great tool.

I peeked at the source code once.   Wow.   “Glad somebody wrote that (and wrote it so well) ... glad it wasn’t me.”

[DaveMonk]

Hey thanks man. Appreciate it.