POSIX::strftime 1

[andy98]

Hi

I am trying to configure a Bug Tracking program that is written in Perl and want to get the dates to format differently.

These are the lines of code in one of the PERL Modules that I want to change...


sub now {

my $now = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S", localtime);

return $now;
}


What I want to return is a date in the format of (dd-mm-yyyy)..


my $now = POSIX::strftime("%d-%m-%Y %H:%M:%S", localtime);


But this just fails. Can anyone help?

 

[ishnid]

What do you mean by "just fails"? Your code worked perfectly for me.

$ perl -MPOSIX -e 'print POSIX::strftime("%d-%m-%Y %H:%M:%S", localtime),"\n"'

03-02-2004 11:21:07

 

[PaulTEG]

Try this instead of using POSIX functions

(@date)=localtime;
$date[5]+=1900;$date[4]++;
$now=sprintf("%0.2d-%0.2d-%0.4d %0.2d:%0.2d:%0.2d",$date[3],$date[4]++, $date[5], $date[2],$date[1],$date[0]);
print "$now";

HTH
--Paul

 

[andy98]

When I try

sub now {

my $now = POSIX::strftime("%d-%m-%Y %H:%M:%S", localtime);

return $now;
}


All i get is.......

CGI Error
The specified CGI application misbehaved by not returning a complete set of HTTP headers. The headers it did return are:


DBD::ODBC::st execute failed: [Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver]Invalid character value for cast specification (SQL-22018)(DBD: st_execute/SQLExecute err=-1) at lib/dbase.pm line 78.
DBD::ODBC::st execute failed: [Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver]Invalid character value for cast specification (SQL-22018)(DBD: st_execute/SQLExecute err=-1) at lib/dbase.pm line 78.

 

[ishnid]

Looks like you've an SQL error at line 78.

 

[andy98]

I don't see why ....

This will work:

my $now = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S", localtime);

But this throws an error!

my $now = POSIX::strftime("%d-%m-%Y %H:%M:%S", localtime);

 

[rosenk]

I would guess that you're using

$now

to insert into the database, but it's not in a date format that your SQL server understands.

 

[andy98]

So how do I configure SQL Server to understand my date format?

 

[andy98]

The Language settings on the Database Server are set to English (United States). This is probably the reason why I am getting this error, as rosenk has suggested.

Unfortunately, I cannot verify this by testing it as I cannot reboot the server.

 

[ishnid]

Most (if not all) SQL DBs behave like that, i.e. accepting dates in yyyy-mm-dd format. This is because of the ambiguities involved in doing it any other way, for example 02/03/2004 is the second of March in Europe, while it's the third of February in the US. The yyyy-mm-dd format is the international standard for representing dates, since nobody would agree to use the *other* od.

 

[andy98]

I think we should all just adopt the British format. It would save us a lot of fuss over here in the UK. ;O)

 

[rosenk]

You're probably best off keeping two variables, one for display to your users and one for inserting into the database. If all of the database interaction code is isolated, I'd make

$now

be for display and create a new variable for use with the database -- whichever way would involve the fewest changes.