How to find out what the date was 5 days ago?

Question

Well, the following returns what date was 5 days ago:

$days_ago = date('Y-m-d', mktime(0, 0, 0, date("m") , date("d") - 5, date("Y"))); 

But, how do I find what was 5 days ago from any date, not just today?

For example: What was 5 days prior to 2008-12-02?

Answer 1

I think a readable way of doing that is:

$days_ago = date('Y-m-d', strtotime('-5 days', strtotime('2008-12-02')));