jeffa steps up to the podium

[feedback] testing ... is this thing on? ahem. Manipulating dates in Perl is a common task, and it's no wonder that there are a plethora of date modules in the Date namespace. As you can see in the following Power Point slide [show slide that makes the Bioperl Class Diagram look easy], determining which Date module to use is quite a chore. All of that just to find a date. Enter Acme::Current.

Acme::Current seeks to [feedback] (can that be fixed?) ... anyhoo, it seeks to eliminate the complexity associated with determining the current date. I installed the module on my box yesterday, let's test it out:

use Acme::Current;
printf "It's now %04d/%02d/%02d.\n",
    $Acme::Current::YEAR,
    $Acme::Current::MONTH,
    $Acme::Current::DAY
;
[download]

And when run, this yields:

It's now 2003/07/15.

Uh oh. Today is the 16th (is today the 16th?). Yes it appears to be the 16th. [shuffles notes] Ummmm. help. [shuffles notes ... feedback]. Aha! I forgot to update the module today! [installs module again].

There, let's run that code again:

use Acme::Current;
printf "It's now %04d/%02d/%02d.\n",
    $Acme::Current::YEAR,
    $Acme::Current::MONTH,
    $Acme::Current::DAY
;
[download]

and we get the current date:

It's now 2003/07/16.

In conclusion, as long as you keep Acme::Current up to date (a scheduled cron job should do the trick), Acme::Current will keep you up to date with the current date ... as long as you don't mind that date being GMT, or course. Thank you.

[feedback]

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