parses the specified date string into a scalar long.
format - the date/time format.
"date string" - a string that follows the specified format
returns a scalar long containing the number of milliseconds since the epoch represented by the specified date string.
# lets do a little 'date' arithmetic $event = "14/Oct/2006:12:24:00 -0500"; $a = parseDate('dd/MMM/yyyy:kk:mm:ss Z', $event); $now = "2006.10.14 at 13:40:00 EDT"; $b = parseDate("yyyy.MM.dd 'at' HH:mm:ss z", $now); # keep in mind we are dealing with milliseconds # i.e. 60 * 1000 = 1 minute $diff = $b - $a; println("event occured " . ($diff / 60000) . " minutes ago"); # subtract the difference from our "now" value $when = $b - $diff; println("event occured " . formatDate($when, "yyyy.MM.dd 'at' HH:mm:ss z"));
event occured 16 minutes ago event occured 2006.10.14 at 13:24:00 EDT