How can I parse relative dates with Perl?

Question

I\'d love to know if there is a module to parse \"human formatted\" dates in Perl. I mean things like \"tomorrow\", \"Tuesday\", \"next week\", \"1 hour ago\".

My re

Answer 1

you may also find it interesting to look at the DateTime::Format family, specifically DateTime::Format::Natural. once you've parsed your date/time into a DateTime object, you can manipulate and evaluate it in a whole bunch of different ways.

here's a sample program:

use strict;
use warnings;

use DateTime::Format::Natural;

my( $parser ) = DateTime::Format::Natural->new;

while ( <> ) {

    chomp;
    my( $dt ) = $parser->parse_datetime( $_ );

    if ( $parser->success ) {

        print join( ' ', $dt->ymd, $dt->hms ) . "\n";
    }
    else {

        print $parser->error . "\n";
    }
}

output:

tomorrow  
2008-11-18 21:48:49  
next Tuesday  
2008-11-25 21:48:53  
1 week from now  
2008-11-24 21:48:57  
1 hour ago  
2008-11-17 20:48:59  

TMTOWTDI :)

-steve