Perl Epoch Converter Routines

 

 Getting current epoch time in Perl

Time returns an integer with the current epoch:

time

 

 Converting from epoch to normal date in Perl

Using the internal localtime or gmtime functions:

my $time = time;	# or any other epoch timestamp 
my @months = ("Jan","Feb","Mar","Apr","May","Jun","Jul","Aug","Sep","Oct","Nov","Dec");
my ($sec, $min, $hour, $day,$month,$year) = (localtime($time))[0,1,2,3,4,5,6]; 
# You can use 'gmtime' for GMT/UTC dates instead of 'localtime'
print "Unix time ".$time." converts to ".$months[$month]." ".$day.", ".($year+1900);
print " ".$hour.":".$min.":".$sec."\n";

Using the DataTime module:

use DateTime;
$dt = DateTime->from_epoch( epoch => $epoch );

$year   = $dt->year;
$month  = $dt->month;		# 1-12 - also mon
$day    = $dt->day;		# 1-31 - also day_of_month, mday
$dow    = $dt->day_of_week;		# 1-7 (Monday is 1) - also dow, wday
$hour   = $dt->hour;		# 0-23
$minute = $dt->minute; 		# 0-59 - also min
$second = $dt->second;		# 0-61 (leap seconds!) - also sec
$doy    = $dt->day_of_year;		# 1-366 (leap years) - also doy
$doq    = $dt->day_of_quarter;	# 1.. - also doq
$qtr    = $dt->quarter;		# 1-4
$ymd    = $dt->ymd;		# 1974-11-30
$ymd    = $dt->ymd('/');		# 1974/11/30 - also date
$hms    = $dt->hms;		# 13:30:00
$hms    = $dt->hms('|');		# 13!30!00 - also time

 

 Converting from normal date to epoch in Perl

Using the Time::Local module:

use Time::Local;
my $time = timelocal($sec,$min,$hours,$day,$month,$year); 
# replace 'timelocal' with 'timegm' if your input date is GMT/UTC

Using the DataTime module:

use DateTime;
$dt = DateTime->new( year   => 1974, month  => 11, day    => 30, hour   => 13, minute => 30, 
	second => 0, nanosecond => 500000000, time_zone => 'Asia/Taipei' );
$epoch_time  = $dt->epoch;

Find more detailed information on CPAN: Time::Local, DateTime. You can also use Date::Manip if you need more advanced date manipulation routines.

The Perl Cookbook, Second Edition gives detailed information on manipulating dates and times in chapter 3 (pages 90-110).

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