How to get the system clock in format in Perl? - perl

Question

I want to get the system clock (time and date) and display it in a human-readable format in Perl.
The format like 2014-09-12 15:13:56
#!/usr/local/bin/perl
my %months = qw(Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul
Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec);
#weekDays = qw(Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun);
($second, $minute, $hour, $dayOfMonth, $month, $yearOffset, $dayOfWeek, $dayOfYear,
$daylightSavings) = localtime();
$year = 1900 + $yearOffset;
$now = "$year-$months-$dayOfMonth $hour:$minute:$second";
print $now;
When you run the program, you should see a much more readable date and time like this:
2014--12 16:57:15
how to get convert the month to number ?

Answer 1

Using Time::Piece (core module since perl v5.9.5)
use Time::Piece;
my $dt = localtime;
print $dt->ymd, " ", $dt->hms, "\n";
using DateTime
use DateTime;
my $dt = DateTime->now();
print $dt->ymd, " ", $dt->hms, "\n";

Answer 2

It's easier using a Perl module (POSIX doesn't requires installation):
use POSIX qw/strftime/;
my $now_string = strftime "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S", localtime;
print $now_string, "\n"; #<-- prints: 2014-09-12 11:09:45 (with my local time)
Regarding to your code, there is a typo:
$now = "$year-$months-$dayOfMonth $hour:$minute:$second";
should be:
$now = "$year-$month-$dayOfMonth $hour:$minute:$second";
Be sure to write use strict; and use warnings; in the top place of your script. It prevents you from errors like that.

Answer 3

I like to put these date and time tasks into functions for reuse.
Here is my approach:
use strict;
use warnings;
my $time_stamp = getTodaysDateTime();
print "Program Started: $time_stamp \n";
# do some processing
$time_stamp = getTodaysDateTime();
print "Program Ended: $time_stamp \n";
# return date in specific format
# ex: 2014-09-12 14:11:43
sub getTodaysDateTime {
my ($sec,$min,$hour,$mday,$mon,$year,
$wday,$yday,$isdst) = localtime(time);
$year += 1900;
$mon += 1;
return sprintf("%d-%02d-%02d %02d:%02d:%02d",
$year,$mon,$mday,$hour,$min,$sec);
}