This function will try to parse a date string, and then return it as a
list of numerical values followed by a (possible undefined) time zone
specifier; ($year, $month, $day, $hour, $min, $sec, $tz). The $year
will be the full 4-digit year, and $month numbers start with 1 (for January).
In scalar context the numbers are interpolated in a string of the
``YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss TZ''-format and returned.
If the date is unrecognized, then the empty list is returned (undef
in
scalar context).
The function is able to parse the following formats:
"Wed, 09 Feb 1994 22:23:32 GMT" -- HTTP format
"Thu Feb 3 17:03:55 GMT 1994" -- ctime(3) format
"Thu Feb 3 00:00:00 1994", -- ANSI C asctime() format
"Tuesday, 08-Feb-94 14:15:29 GMT" -- old rfc850 HTTP format
"Tuesday, 08-Feb-1994 14:15:29 GMT" -- broken rfc850 HTTP format
"03/Feb/1994:17:03:55 -0700" -- common logfile format
"09 Feb 1994 22:23:32 GMT" -- HTTP format (no weekday)
"08-Feb-94 14:15:29 GMT" -- rfc850 format (no weekday)
"08-Feb-1994 14:15:29 GMT" -- broken rfc850 format (no weekday)
"1994-02-03 14:15:29 -0100" -- ISO 8601 format
"1994-02-03 14:15:29" -- zone is optional
"1994-02-03" -- only date
"1994-02-03T14:15:29" -- Use T as separator
"19940203T141529Z" -- ISO 8601 compact format
"19940203" -- only date
"08-Feb-94" -- old rfc850 HTTP format (no weekday, no time)
"08-Feb-1994" -- broken rfc850 HTTP format (no weekday, no time)
"09 Feb 1994" -- proposed new HTTP format (no weekday, no time)
"03/Feb/1994" -- common logfile format (no time, no offset)
"Feb 3 1994" -- Unix 'ls -l' format
"Feb 3 17:03" -- Unix 'ls -l' format
"11-15-96 03:52PM" -- Windows 'dir' format
The parser ignores leading and trailing whitespace. It also allow the
seconds to be missing and the month to be numerical in most formats.
If the year is missing, then we assume that the date is the first
matching date before current month. If the year is given with only
2 digits, then parse_date()
will select the century that makes the
year closest to the current date.