Use Perl to Add 2 days to Today

Question

I want to use perl and add two days from today and output this as a unix time. I have found lots of information on how to convert Unix time to readable time but I need the ouput to be a unix time. I found this

my $time = time;    # or any other epoch timestamp 
my @months = ("Jan","Feb","Mar","Apr","May","Jun","Jul",
              "Aug","Sep","Oct","Nov","Dec");
my ($sec, $min, $hour, $day,$month,$year) = (localtime($time))[0,1,2,3,4,5]; 
# You can use 'gmtime' for GMT/UTC dates instead of 'localtime'
print "Unix time ".$time." converts to ".$months[$month].
      " ".$day.", ".($year+1900);

How do I take current time and add 2 days and output as Unix time.

Solution 1

Have you considered using the DateTime package? It contains a lot of date manipulation and computation routines, including the ability to add dates.

There is an FAQ, with examples, here (in particular, see the section on sample calculations and DateTime formats).

Here is a snippet:

use strict;
use warnings;

use DateTime;

my $dt = DateTime->now();
print "Now: " . $dt->datetime() . "\n";
print "Now (epoch): " . $dt->epoch() . "\n";

my $two_days_from_now = $dt->add(days => 2);
print "Two days from now: " . $two_days_from_now->datetime() . "\n";
print "Two days from now (epoch): " . $two_days_from_now->epoch() . "\n";

Which produces the following output:

Now: 2013-02-23T18:30:58
Now (epoch): 1361644258
Two days from now: 2013-02-25T18:30:58
Two days from now (epoch): 1361817058

Solution 2

yuu can change the timestamp, which is seconds from epoc

change

my $time = time;

to

my $time = time + 2 * 24 * 60 * 60 ; # 60 seconds 60 minutes 24 hours times 2

Comments

[Steven Tharp]

Thanks that is exactly what I need

[Jacob]

@Borodin It is clearer than my($sec,$min,$hour,$mday,$mon,$year,$wday,$yday,$isdst)=loca‌​ltime(time()+(2*24*6‌​0*60));. It is also fast-enough that I doubt you would notice the speed difference.

[Borodin]

@BradGilbert: What is wanted is just the epoch time, so print time() + 172800 is all that is necessary. Efficiency isn't an issue, but I disagree that this version is clear.

[Doug Moscrop]

@Borodin - This version is plenty clear. The only reason it's more 'work' is because it does more than yours - it prints before and after (for demonstration purposes) - if you strip it down to just what is required, it's at most one more call or piece of 'work' than yours. Your answer references a magic number. A built-in one, but one nonetheless.

[Borodin]

@Doug: Oh come on. The shortest this can be is use Datetime; print Datetime->now->add(days => 2)->epoch; which IMO is ridiculous when all that is required is print time() + 2 * 24 * 60 * 60.

[Doug Moscrop]

"Oh come on" indeed - the feeling is mutual.

[Relequestual]

@StevenTharp If this worked for you, consider accepting the answer =]