How to convert text date to timestamp?

Question

How to convert date in text format:

23.10.2011  11:35:00

to timestamp ?

Answer 1

You can use Time::Piece, a core module. The formats can be found on the man page for strptime.

use Time::Piece;
my $tp = Time::Piece->strptime("23.10.2011  11:35:00", 
                               "%d.%m.%Y  %H:%M:%S");
print $tp->epoch; # 1319369700
print $tp;        # "Sun Oct 23 11:35:00 2011", same as $tp->cdate