date_parse(3) date_parse(3)
11 February 1995
NAME
date_parse - parse string dates into internal form
SYNOPSIS
time_t date_parse( char* str )
DESCRIPTION
Parses a date string into standard Unix internal time form (seconds
since epoch). The date should be in one of the following formats:
N mth YYYY HH:MM:SS ampm zone
HH:MM:SS ampm zone N mth YYYY
wdy, N mth YYYY HH:MM:SS ampm zone
wdy mth N HH:MM:SS ampm zone YYYY
N mth YYYY
HH:MM:SS ampm
No-zone, no-seconds, and no-am/pm versions of each are also allowed.
Any missing parts default to the current date/time. Note that
dd/mm/yy and mm/dd/yy are not supported - those formats are dumb.
SPEED
The implementation is just a bunch of sscanf's - small and portable,
but slow. Still, it's not that bad. On a SPARCstation 2 parsing
~70000 random dates, the average time was 0.94 msec/date. This
compares surprising well with the lex-based date parser from the MH
package, which took 0.34 msec/date in the same test. The yacc-based
parser used in many netnews packages is about halfway between the two.
In any application which has to open a file for each date - and both
MH and netnews are such applications - the difference in date parsing
speed will not be perceptible to the user.
SEE ALSO
date_sort(1), date_order(1), deltime(1), xmit_time(1)
AUTHOR
Copyright (C) 1995 by Jef Poskanzer <jef@acme.com>. All rights
reserved.
- 1 - Formatted: October 28, 2025
