On Sun, Aug 06, 2000 at 01:41:06PM -0000, Perl6 RFC Librarian wrote:
> $scalar = date; # scalar ctime date, same as current
> @array = date; # array of date/time values (new order)
> %hash = date; # hash of date/time values (new)
> $object = date; # object with accessor functions (new)
>
> The new C<date()> function will return time adjusted for the local
> timezone. To get UTC (or GMT, for nostalgic types) time, you simply pass
> an argument to C<date()>.
Please don't gloss over the timezone issue so easily. There is
nothing simple about timezones (except for GMT, of course). The
reason there are *NO* good OO date modules on CPAN is that people fail
to realize what nastiness comes from sticking in timezone support as
an afterthought.
For example, Time::Object's interface practically precludes adjusting
for daylight savings when doing date (as opposed to date/time)
arithmetic:
#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w
$ENV{'TZ'} = 'US/Pacific';
use Time::Object;
use Time::Seconds;
print "$Time::Object::VERSION\n";
$t = localtime 954547200;
print $t, "\n";
print $t - 30 * ONE_DAY, "\n";
print $t + 30 * ONE_DAY, "\n";
=>
add
0.11
Fri Mar 31 16:00:00 2000
Wed Mar 1 16:00:00 2000
Sun Apr 30 17:00:00 2000
Notice that adding 30 days to March 31 has the (probably unwanted)
effect of changing the time from 16:00 to 17:00. Dates and date/times
are just entirely different beasties due to the horrible (and
senseless, btw) complexity of daylight savings time rules.
-John
