Rick,
True...good tip. I generally ignore the timezone and weekday patterns
when I parse date strings and didn't think of the ambiguity. I generally
pattern match to extract the pieces I want and then pass those to Strptime with
any explicit options needed for my particular data source or storage
requirements.
Bobby
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Rick Measham [mailto:ri...@isite.net.au]
> Sent: Tuesday, March 17, 2009 6:34 PM
> To: jim.mo...@yahoo.com
> Cc: datetime@perl.org
> Subject: Re: Module To Parse Format 'Friday, March 13, 2009 04:20 PM EST'
>
> Metz, Bobby wrote:
> > Jim,
> > You don't need to write your own module to handle these. Just use
> the DateTime::Format::Strptime module. Modify the parser example below
> with a pattern to suit your own format. $dt will hold your new datetime
> object with the values parsed from your string format.
> >
> > my $parser = DateTime::Format::Strptime->new(pattern => '%a %b %d
> %H:%M:%S %Y');
> > my $dt = $parser->parse_datetime($val);
> >
> > See the CPAN page for all of the pattern options:
> >
> > http://search.cpan.org/~rickm/DateTime-Format-Strptime-
> 1.0900/lib/DateTime/Format/Strptime.pm
>
> Strptime is the 'easy' answer but isn't quite correct.
>
> Here's the example again:
> Friday, March 13, 2009 04:20 PM EST
>
> %a = Friday,
> %b = March,
> %d = 13,
> %Y = 2009,
> %I = 04,
> %M = 20,
> %p = pm,
> %Z = EST,
>
> So we have the pattern: "%a, %b %d, %Y %I:%M %p %Z"
>
> HOWEVER: 'EST' is ambiguous so it won't work. Are you always in the same
> time zone? If so, use the pattern "%a, %b %d, %Y %I:%M %p EST" and set
> the time zone explicitly.
>
> Cheers!
> Rick Measham
>
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