How can I calculate the number of days between two

Question

Heylo,

I want to calculate (using the default Perl installation only) the number of days between two dates. The format of both the dates are like so 04-MAY-09. (DD-MMM-YY)

I couldn't find any tutorials that discussed that date format. Should I be building a custom date checker for this format? Further reading of the Date::Calc on CPAN it looks unlikely that this format is supported.

Thanks.

Answer 1

You could convert the dates into the long integer format, which is the number of seconds since the epoch (some date in 1970 I think). You then have two variables that are the dates in seconds; subtract the smaller from the larger. Now you have a time span in seconds; divide it by the number of seconds in 24 hours.

Answer 2

There seems to be quite a bit of confusion because, depending on what you are trying to accomplish, “the number of days between two dates” can mean at least two different things:

1. The calendar distance between the two dates.
2. The absolute distance between the two dates.

As an example and to note the difference, assume that you have two DateTime objects constructed as follows:

use DateTime;

sub iso8601_date {
  die unless $_[0] =~ m/^(\d\d\d\d)-(\d\d)-(\d\d)T(\d\d):(\d\d):(\d\d)Z$/;
  return DateTime->new(year => $1, month => $2, day => $3,
    hour => $4, minute => $5, second => $6, time_zone  => 'UTC');
}

my $dt1 = iso8601_date('2014-11-04T23:35:42Z');
my $dt2 = iso8601_date('2014-11-07T01:15:18Z');

Note that $dt1 is quite late on a Tuesday, while $dt2 is very early on the following Friday.

If you want the calendar distance use:

my $days = $dt2->delta_days($dt1)->delta_days();
print "$days\n" # -> 3

Indeed, between, Tuesday and Friday there are 3 days. A calendar distance of 1 means “tomorrow” and a distance of -1 means “yesterday”. The “time” part of the DateTime objects is mostly irrelevant (except perhaps if the two dates fall on different time zones, then you would have to decide what “the calendar distance” between those two dates should mean).

If you want the absolute distance then instead use:

my $days = $dt2->subtract_datetime_absolute($dt1)->delta_seconds / (24*60*60);
print "$days\n"; # -> 2.06916666666667

Indeed, if you want to split the time between the two dates in 24-hour chunks, there are only about 2.07 days between them. Depending on your application, you might want to truncate or round this number. The “time” part of the DateTime objects is very relevant, and the expected result is well defined even for dates on different time zones.

Answer 3

Date::Calc has Decode_Date_EU (and US etc)

#!/usr/bin/perl
use Date::Calc qw(Delta_Days Decode_Date_EU);

($year1,$month1,$day1) = Decode_Date_EU('02-MAY-09');
($year2,$month2,$day2) = Decode_Date_EU('04-MAY-09');

print "Diff = " . Delta_Days($year1,$month1,$day1, $year2,$month2,$day2);

Answer 4

Convert the two dates to seconds and then do the math:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;
use POSIX qw/mktime/;

{

    my %mon = (
        JAN => 0,
        FEB => 1,
        MAR => 2,
        APR => 3,
        MAY => 4,
        JUN => 5,
        JUL => 6,
        AUG => 7,
        SEP => 8,
        OCT => 9,
        NOV => 10,
        DEC => 11,
    );

    sub date_to_seconds {
        my $date = shift;
        my ($day, $month, $year) = split /-/, $date;

        $month = $mon{$month};
        if ($year < 50) { #or whatever your cutoff is
            $year += 100; #make it 20??
        }

        #return midnight on the day in question in 
        #seconds since the epoch
        return mktime 0, 0, 0, $day, $month, $year;
    }
}

my $d1 = "04-MAY-99";
my $d2 = "04-MAY-00";

my $s1 = date_to_seconds $d1;
my $s2 = date_to_seconds $d2;

my $days = int(($s2 - $s1)/(24*60*60));

print "there are $days days between $d1 and $d2\n";

Answer 5

If you care about accuracy, keep in mind that not all days have 86400 seconds. Any solution based on that assumption will not be correct for some cases.

Here's a snippet I keep around to calculate and display date/time differences a few different ways using the DateTime library. The last answer printed is the one you want, I think.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

use DateTime;
use DateTime::Format::Duration;

# XXX: Create your two dates here
my $d1 = DateTime->new(...);
my $d2 = DateTime->new(...);

my $dur = ($d1 > $d2 ? ($d1->subtract_datetime_absolute($d2)) : 
                       ($d2->subtract_datetime_absolute($d1)));

my $f = DateTime::Format::Duration->new(pattern => 
  '%Y years, %m months, %e days, %H hours, %M minutes, %S seconds');

print $f->format_duration($dur), "\n";

$dur = $d1->delta_md($d2);

my $dy = int($dur->delta_months / 12);
my $dm = $dur->delta_months % 12;
print "$dy years $dm months ", $dur->delta_days, " days\n";
print $dur->delta_months, " months ", $dur->delta_days, " days\n";
print $d1->delta_days($d2)->delta_days, " days\n";

Answer 6

Time::ParseDate will handle that format just fine:

use Time::ParseDate qw(parsedate);

$d1="04-MAR-09";
$d2="06-MAR-09";

printf "%d days difference\n", (parsedate($d2) - parsedate($d1)) / (60 * 60 * 24);