Date::Format(3) User Contributed Perl Documentation Date::Format(3)
NAME
Date::Format - Date formatting subroutines
VERSION
version 2.35
SYNOPSIS
use Date::Format;
my @lt = localtime(time);
my $template = "....";
print time2str($template, time);
print strftime($template, @lt);
my $zone;
print time2str($template, time, $zone);
print strftime($template, @lt, $zone);
print ctime(time);
print asctime(@lt);
print ctime(time, $zone);
print asctime(@lt, $zone);
DESCRIPTION
This module provides routines to format dates into ASCII strings. They
correspond to the C library routines "strftime" and "ctime".
time2str(TEMPLATE, TIME [, ZONE [, LANGUAGE]])
"time2str" converts "TIME" into an ASCII string using the
conversion specification given in "TEMPLATE". "ZONE" if given
specifies the zone which the output is required to be in, "ZONE"
defaults to your current zone. "LANGUAGE" if given specifies the
language for day and month names (e.g. 'German', 'French');
defaults to 'English'.
strftime(TEMPLATE, TIME [, ZONE])
"strftime" is similar to "time2str" with the exception that the
time is passed as an array, such as the array returned by
"localtime".
ctime(TIME [, ZONE])
"ctime" calls "time2str" with the given arguments using the
conversion specification "%a %b %e %T %Y\n"
asctime(TIME [, ZONE])
"asctime" calls "time2str" with the given arguments using the
conversion specification "%a %b %e %T %Y\n"
NAME
Date::Format - Date formatting subroutines
MULTI-LANGUAGE SUPPORT
Date::Format is capable of formatting into several languages. You can
pass an optional language name directly to "time2str":
time2str("%a %b %e %T %Y\n", time, undef, 'German');
time2str("%a %b %e %T %Y\n", time, 'GMT', 'French');
Alternatively, create a language-specific object and call methods on
it, see Date::Language:
my $lang = Date::Language->new('German');
$lang->time2str("%a %b %e %T %Y\n", time);
CONVERSION SPECIFICATION
Each conversion specification is replaced by appropriate characters
as described in the following list. The appropriate characters
are determined by the LC_TIME category of the program's locale.
%% PERCENT
%a day of the week abbr
%A day of the week
%b month abbr
%B month
%c MM/DD/YY HH:MM:SS
%C ctime format: Sat Nov 19 21:05:57 1994
%d numeric day of the month, with leading zeros (eg 01..31)
%e like %d, but a leading zero is replaced by a space (eg 1..32)
%D MM/DD/YY
%G GPS week number (weeks since January 6, 1980)
%h month abbr
%H hour, 24 hour clock, leading 0's)
%I hour, 12 hour clock, leading 0's)
%j day of the year
%k hour
%l hour, 12 hour clock
%L month number, starting with 1
%m month number, starting with 01
%M minute, leading 0's
%n NEWLINE
%o ornate day of month -- "1st", "2nd", "25th", etc.
%p AM or PM
%P am or pm (Yes %p and %P are backwards :)
%q Quarter number, starting with 1
%r time format: 09:05:57 PM
%R time format: 21:05
%s seconds since the Epoch, UCT
%S seconds, leading 0's
%t TAB
%T time format: 21:05:57
%U week number, Sunday as first day of week
%w day of the week, numerically, Sunday == 0
%W week number, Monday as first day of week
%x date format: 11/19/94
%X time format: 21:05:57
%y year (2 digits)
%Y year (4 digits)
%Z timezone in ascii. eg: PST
%z timezone in format -/+0000
%d, %e, %H, %I, %j, %k, %l, %m, %M, %q, %y and %Y can be output in
Roman numerals by prefixing the letter with "O", e.g. %OY will output
the year as roman numerals.
LIMITATION
The functions in this module are limited to the time range that can be
represented by the time_t data type, i.e. 1901-12-13 20:45:53 GMT to
2038-01-19 03:14:07 GMT.
AUTHOR
Graham Barr <gbarr@pobox.com>
COPYRIGHT
Copyright (c) 1995-2009 Graham Barr. This program is free software; you
can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl
itself.
AUTHOR
Graham <gbarr@pobox.com>
COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
This software is copyright (c) 2020 by Graham Barr.
This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.
perl v5.34.3 2026-03-26 Date::Format(3)
timedate 2.350.0 - Generated Fri Apr 3 08:36:20 CDT 2026