Problem
You want to capture the current epoch. Maybe to use in a log file, or as a filename.
Or maybe you want to calculate the date yesterday.
Solution
This piece of code is very useful for performing date calculations. You can obtain the current epoch (time in seconds since Jan 1 1970), then add 3600 for 1 hour – or 86400 for 24 hours hence.
Example
So use in a UNIX variable like this:
epoch=perl -M'English' -e 'print $BASETIME."n";'
To work out 24 hours ago, just subtract 86400.
perl -M'English' -e 'print(($BASETIME-86400)."n");'
Then to see the date yesterday:
$ perl -M'English' -e 'print(($BASETIME-86400)."n");'
1180746252
$ perl -M'English' -e 'print(localtime(1180746252)."n");'
Sat Jun 2 09:04:12 2007
Reference
[tags]Perl, epoch, date manipulation, Perl Coding School[/tags]
