Date Manip Delta

epoch1 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi monks, We've been using the following code on a legacy system for years but users have reported recently that something isn't working correctly:

$expected_date = '2016-11-05 14:00';
$actual_date = '2016-11-09 14:00';

my $delta = DateCalc($expected_date,$actual_date);
#print $delta = 0:0:0:0:96:0:0

$delta = Delta_Format($delta,0,"%dh");
#print $delta = 0
[download]

I believe the final $delta value should be 4 (days) but it is 0. Does anyone know why this is happening and how I can rectify this? Thanks monks.

Comment on Date Manip Delta_Format Download Code

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Re: Date Manip Delta_Format by SBECK (Chaplain) on Nov 09, 2016 at 14:40 UTC
From the Date::Manip documentation: %Xh : print the value of field X and all larger units in terms of X so you are asking for the values of the fields of d (day) and higher in terms of days. The values of all fields higher are 0:0:0:0, which is a total of 0 days, so what you got is expected. It appears to me that what you are really asking for is the value of the delta in days, but ignoring the fact that a day is not strictly 24 hours (due to daylight saving time). The following will do that: `Delta_Format($delta,'semi',0,'%dt') => 4` [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: Date Manip Delta_Format by SBECK (Chaplain) on Nov 09, 2016 at 14:43 UTC
By the way, the format of the delta did change (from an older 0:0:0:4:0:0:0 to a newer 0:0:0:0:96:0:0) to handle the fact that a day was not a constant length period of time. That change was quite a while ago though, so I wonder if you upgraded Date::Manip recently after a long period of using an older version. That would explain why this just started failing for you.	[reply]
Re^3: Date Manip Delta_Format by epoch1 (Acolyte) on Nov 11, 2016 at 09:23 UTC
Thank you. It was due to the module update.	[reply]


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Date Manip Delta_Format