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<TITLE>Date::Pcalc Readme Page</TITLE>
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If you are looking for information on <A HREF="CHANGES.txt">what is new</A> in this version, prerequisites and <A HREF="INSTALL.txt">installation instructions</A>, you will find it either in the <A HREF="README.txt">README</A> file included in this distribution, <A HREF="http://www.engelschall.com/~sb/download/pkg/Date-Pcalc-6.1.README">on my website</A> or <A HREF="http://cpansearch.perl.org/src/STBEY/Date-Pcalc-6.1/README.txt">on CPAN</A>.
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<H3>See</H3>
<A HREF="http://search.cpan.org/search?module=Date::Pcalc"><IMG SRC="http://www.engelschall.com/u/sb/download/Date-Calc/img/cpan_banner.png" ALT="[search.cpan.org]" BORDER="0"></A>
<H3>for the latest manual page.</H3>
<P>
<H1>Date::Pcalc</H1>
<A HREF="http://www.engelschall.com/u/sb/demo/"><IMG SRC="http://www.engelschall.com/u/sb/download/img/Date-Calc.gif" ALT="[Date::Pcalc]" WIDTH="455" HEIGHT="230" BORDER="0"></A>
<P>
<H3>What is it for?</H3>
Date calculations, e.g.
<UL>
<LI>"Basic stuff" like leap year, "Julian day" (or "date"), day-of-week, days in month/year, etc.
<LI>Comparing dates
<LI>Conversion from a date (e.g. 01-Jun-2004) to the number of days (e.g. 731733) and vice-versa
<LI>Calculating a date (e.g. 01-Jun-2004) plus/minus a number of days (e.g. +35) yielding a new date (e.g. 06-Jul-2004)
<LI>Calculating the nth day-of-week of a month and year (e.g. the first Tuesday of July 2004 = 06-Jul-2004)
<LI>Calculating differences between dates (and/or times)
<LI>Calculating Easter Sunday and holidays depending on it
<LI>...
</UL>
based on
<UL>
<LI>the Gregorian calendar (decreed in 1582 by pope Gregor I)
<LI><A HREF="http://www.engelschall.com/u/sb/download/Date-Calc/DIN1355/">DIN 1355</A>
<LI><A HREF="http://www.iso.ch/iso/en/prods-services/popstds/datesandtime.html">ISO 8601</A> (to some extent, where applicable)
<BR>(See also <A HREF="http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-datetime">W3C</A>, <A HREF="http://www.mcs.vuw.ac.nz/technical/software/SGML/doc/iso8601/ISO8601.html">Victoria University of Wellington</A> or <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601">Wikipedia</A>)
</UL>
<H3>Philosophy</H3>
<UL>
<LI>Toolbox, not a (heavy) ready-made application
<LI>Interoperable, "LEGO system"
<LI>Spirit of UNIX command-line tools (be small, do only one thing, and be good at it)
<LI>Be computationally complete, i.e., everything should be computable (even if it takes a little more than only one function call)
</UL>
<H3>What it is <B><U>NOT</U></B></H3>
<UL>
<LI>A jack-of-all-trades (see e.g. <A HREF="http://search.cpan.org/search?module=Date::Manip">Date::Manip</A> instead)
<LI>A module specializing in date parsing (see e.g. <A HREF="http://search.cpan.org/search?module=Date::Parse">Date::Parse</A>, <A HREF="http://search.cpan.org/search?module=Time::ParseDate">Time::ParseDate</A> or <A HREF="http://search.cpan.org/search?module=Date::Manip">Date::Manip</A> instead)
<LI>A module specializing in date formatting (see e.g. <A HREF="http://search.cpan.org/search?module=Date::Format">Date::Format</A> or <A HREF="http://search.cpan.org/search?module=Date::Manip">Date::Manip</A> instead)
<LI>A module specializing in the handling of timezones (see e.g. <A HREF="http://search.cpan.org/search?module=Time::Timezone">Time::Timezone</A> or <A HREF="http://search.cpan.org/search?module=Time::Zone">Time::Zone</A> instead)
</UL>
<H3>What it <B><U>IS</U></B></H3>
<UL>
<LI>A module <B><U>primarily</U></B> for performing <B><U>calculations</U></B> with dates (nomen est omen)
<LI>A module intended to be <B><U>small</B></U> (low memory footprint) and <B><U>fast</B></U> (for heavy-duty applications)
</UL>
<P>
<H3>Features</H3>
<UL>
<LI>Extrapolates the Gregorian calendar back beyond 1582 until 1 A.D.
<BR>(historically <B><U>not</B></U> meaningful, but may nevertheless be useful)
<LI>Numerical range extends as far as "int" data type permits, i.e., at least until the year 32767
<LI>Basic date parsing (input) and formatting (output)
<LI>Support for various languages (input and output)
<BR>(Currently 14 as of version 6.1; English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Italian, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Finnish, Hungarian, Polish and Romanian)
<LI>Calculations on dates, with and without time (including timezone offsets)
<LI>Interface to localtime(), gmtime(), mktime() plus own conversion routines (with more predictable results)
<LI><B>Internally written in C for smaller memory usage, faster execution and possibility to use in C applications</B>
<LI>The <A HREF="http://search.cpan.org/search?module=Date::Pcalc">documentation</A> of "Date::Pcalc" gives model solutions to common problems in its "<A HREF="http://search.cpan.org/~stbey/Date-Pcalc-6.1/Pcalc.pod#RECIPES">RECIPES</A>" section
<LI>Optionally provides date objects (i.e., an OO interface) for greater ease of use (Perl only) (<A HREF="http://search.cpan.org/search?module=Date::Pcalc::Object">Date::Pcalc::Object</A>)
<LI>Comprises a module for date calculations taking legal holidays into account (Perl only) (<A HREF="http://search.cpan.org/search?module=Date::Pcalendar">Date::Pcalendar</A>)
<LI>Provides a rich set of holiday profiles for numerous countries (Perl only) (<A HREF="http://search.cpan.org/search?module=Date::Pcalendar::Profiles">Date::Pcalendar::Profiles</A>)
</UL>
<H3>Limitations</H3>
<UL>
<LI>The language setting in "Date::Pcalc" is a global variable (= BEWARE when using threads!)
<LI>The modules "Date::Pcalendar" and "Date::Pcalendar::Year" only operate on years between 1583 and 2299
<LI>Uses the ISO-Latin-1 character set, even for languages (such as Polish) not entirely representable in that character set (uses the "plain" characters instead in such cases)
<LI><FONT COLOR="#FF0000"><B>The calendar profiles included in this module usually do not take historical irregularities into account</B></FONT> (even though some do in order to show how this can be done),<BR>
<FONT COLOR="#FF0000"><B>they only provide means for calculating <U>regularly</U> recurring events (<U>the profiles should therefore not be relied upon for historical faithfulness</U>)</B></FONT>
</UL>
<P>
<H3>See also</H3>
<UL>
<LI>The <A HREF="http://www.engelschall.com/u/sb/calendar/">International Eternal Gregorian Calendar</A> showing a calendar with holidays in selectable languages and countries
<LI>The <A HREF="http://www.engelschall.com/u/sb/demo/">Sports Club Events Calendar</A> showing how this module can be used to manage people attending events in a calendar
<LI>The <A HREF="http://www.engelschall.com/u/sb/datecalc/">Simple Date Calculator</A> for determining the difference between two dates / a new date based on a date plus a difference
<LI>"<A HREF="http://www.tondering.dk/claus/calendar.html">The Calendar FAQ</A>" by <A HREF="mailto:claus@tondering.dk">Claus Tndering</A>
</UL>
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<P>
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If you are looking for information on <A HREF="CHANGES.txt">what is new</A> in this version, prerequisites and <A HREF="INSTALL.txt">installation instructions</A>, you will find it either in the <A HREF="README.txt">README</A> file included in this distribution, <A HREF="http://www.engelschall.com/~sb/download/pkg/Date-Pcalc-6.1.README">on my website</A> or <A HREF="http://cpansearch.perl.org/src/STBEY/Date-Pcalc-6.1/README.txt">on CPAN</A>.
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