How can I parse a strftime formatted string in Perl?

Question

I am new to Perl and I wan to know whether there is an inverse function to the strftime(). Look,

use POSIX qw(strftime);
print strftime("%YT%mT%d TTTT%H:%M:%S", localtime) 

I get: 2009T08T14 TTTT00:37:02. How can I do the oposite operation? From "2009T08T14 TTTT00:37:02" string to get 2009-08-14 00:37:02, knowing the formatting string "%YT%mT%d TTTT%H:%M:%S"?

Answer 1

One option is to parse the numbers using a regular expression and then use Time::Local. However, now that I understand your question is how to go from a strftime formatted string to a time in general, that approach is bound to be cumbersome.

You mention in your answer POSIX::strptime which is great if your platform supports it. Alternatively, you can use DateTime::Format::Strptime:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

use DateTime::Format::Strptime;
use POSIX qw(strftime);

my $f = "%YT%mT%d TTTT%H:%M:%S";
my $s = strftime($f, localtime);

print "$s\n";

my $Strp = DateTime::Format::Strptime->new(
    pattern   => $f,
    locale    => 'en_US',
    time_zone => 'US/Eastern',
);

my $dt = $Strp->parse_datetime($s);

print $dt->epoch, "\n";
print scalar localtime $dt->epoch, "\n";

$dt is a DateTime object so you can do pretty much whatever you want with it.

Answer 2

I think I have found the solution: strptime($strptime_pattern, $string)