[CLUE-Tech] databases and timestamps ... 'since' idiom

[Jeffery C. Cann]

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On Saturday 17 March 2001 22:34, Dave Price wrote:

> Is the time_t time format the same as a *nix time stamps?

Yes.  time_t is the C language structure to hold a time stamp.

> Is there a core module that handles time_t, or do i need a CPAN module
> added? One weird bit, I sometimes like to 'predigest' my text files a bit
> under active state for win32.

PERL supports the time_t time stamp natively.  If you are looking at files, I 
often use the last modified time.  I use the 'stat()' or 'lstat()' built-in 
PERL function.  

Here is a simple example.  Both $ftime and $now will contain large integers 
that represent the number of seconds since the epoch.  So, you can reliably 
compare their timestamps.

I take the ninth element from the array returned by stat because (check 
perldoc page on stat) it is the mtime of the file (i.e., the last 
modification time), 

my $ftime = stat( '/home/jccann/bob.txt' ) [ 9 ];
my $now = time();

if ( $ftime < $now ) {
	print 'my file is older than now';
}

You also can also take a formatted string and build a timestamp.  I haven't 
done this in PERL.  Probably you want to check the PERL cookbook or CPAN for 
an example.

Jeff
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