rline — Wed, 24 Oct 2001 06:58:34 +0000

Thanks a lot Mark,

Not sure why, but me and subroutines don't go...I just spent the best part of an hour trying to debug the thing. As soon as I took it out of the subroutine, it worked. So at least now it behaves as I want it.

Thanks again for your quick response!

Mark Hensler — Wed, 24 Oct 2001 05:20:22 +0000

You need to compair numbers.
Assuming the format "day month year", try this:

#!/usr/bin/perl

sub Numberfy_Date($string_date) {
    $pieces = split(/ /,$string_date);
    
    $day = $pieces[0];
    $year = $pieces[2]
    
    if ($pieces[1] == "January") $month = "01";
    if ($pieces[1] == "February") $month = "02";
    if ($pieces[1] == "March") $month = "03";
    if ($pieces[1] == "April") $month = "04";
    if ($pieces[1] == "May") $month = "05";
    if ($pieces[1] == "June") $month = "06";
    if ($pieces[1] == "July") $month = "07";
    if ($pieces[1] == "August") $month = "08";
    if ($pieces[1] == "September") $month = "09";
    if ($pieces[1] == "October") $month = "10";
    if ($pieces[1] == "November") $month = "11";
    if ($pieces[1] == "December") $month = "12";
    
    return ($year . $month . $day);
}


$date1 = "06 November 2001";
$date2 = "25 October 2001";

if (&Numberfy_Date($date1) le &Numberfy_Date($date2)) {
    # do something
}

'Very crude code. But should give you an idea of what needs to be done.