Date::Manip::Delta - the number of seconds [duplicate] - perl

Question

The code below only expresses the difference in months and days like so:
0:2:0:5:0:0:0
So it works, but I want to know the total number of days given that $ADDate can vary quite a bit. Hopefully this is simple, and I just completely missed how to do it.
#!/usr/bin/perl
use Date::Manip 6.42;
my $ADDate = "20131211000820.0Z";
my $var;
my #val;
my $diff;
calc_period($ADDate = "20131211000820.0Z");
sub calc_period
{
$ADDate =~ s/^([\d][\d][\d][\d])([\d][\d])([\d][\d])/$1-$2-$3/gs;
$ADDate =~ s/.........$//gs;
$today = ParseDate("today");
$beginning = ParseDate($ADDate);
$end = ParseDate($today);
$delta = DateCalc($beginning,$end,\$err,1);
#$delta =~ s/([\d+][:][\d+]):.*$/$1/gs;
print "$delta\n";
print "$ADDate\n";
}

Answer 1

I'm not familiar with Date::Manip, but I think another way to do this is to use Time::Piece to parse your string and do whatever you like with that since taking the difference of two Time::Piece object returns a Time::Seconds object.
The following example will show the difference of the current time and the hardcoded time and show it in days.
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use Time::Piece;
use Time::Seconds;
my $d = "20131211000820.0Z";
my $t = Time::Piece->strptime($d, "%Y%m%d%H%M%S.0Z");
my $now = Time::Piece->localtime();
my $diff = Time::Seconds->new($now - $t);
print $diff->days, "\n";

Answer 2

NigoroJr has already given you an answer. However, just as an FYI, the following is how I would clean up the code you originally provided:
#!/usr/bin/perl
use Date::Manip 6.42;
use strict;
use warnings;
calc_period("20131211000820.0Z");
sub calc_period {
my $date = shift;
$date =~ s/^(\d{4})(\d{2})(\d{2}).*/$1-$2-$3/;
my $beginning = ParseDate($date);
my $end = ParseDate("today");
my $delta = DateCalc($beginning, $end, \my $err, 1);
#$delta =~ s/([\d+][:][\d+]):.*$/$1/gs;
print "$delta\n";
print "$date\n";
}
Biggest differences being the proper use of a function and scoped variables, and a simplification of your regex.
I was unable to find a clean way to get Date::Manip to output a strict delta in days though, so the other module is the way to go.