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perlstrftime

How do I get local mtime from fstat in perl?

Is it possible to get/convert the mtime from fstat to local time in perl?

If I do 

my $stat = stat($file);
my $mtime = $stat->mtime;
my $time = Time::Piece->strptime($time, '%s');

and then format that time to - say - '%Y%m%d%H%M' I get a time that's 1 hour earlier than the time I see on ls -l, as I live in and my machine is configured to GMT+1.

I would instead like to have an output that's consistent with ls -l

so that if 

> ls -l foo.txt
> -rw-r--r--@  1 somuser  296108113    163673 Mar 31 16:43 foo.txt

the output is 202003311643instead of - like I get now - 202003311443 (GMT+1 and DST).

Is there a way to handle this in a straightforward way (i.e.: so that I don't have to manually adjust for the timezone, or DST)?

Solution

  • A Time::Piece object can represent either a local time or a UTC time. The following creates an object representing a UTC time:

    my $time = Time::Piece->strptime($mtime, '%s');

    The equivalent for creating a local time is

    use Time::Piece;
my $time = localtime->strptime($mtime, '%s');

    or

    my $time = Time::Piece::localtime->strptime($mtime, '%s');

    That said, using strptime is unnecessary here. One can simply use

    use Time::Piece;
my $time = localtime($mtime);

    or

    my $time = Time::Piece::localtime($mtime);

    to get the correct Time::Piece object.