Date::Manip::Changes6(3) changes in Date::Manip 6.xx

SYNOPSIS

This describes the changes made to the Date::Manip module in the 6.xx series of releases. Major changes are marked with asterisks (*).

For the most part, Date::Manip has remained backward compatible at every release, but occasionally, a change is made which is backward incompatible. These are marked with an exclamation mark (!).

VERSION 6.56 (planned 2016-12-01)

VERSION 6.55 (planned 2016-09-01)

VERSION 6.54 2016-05-31

Deprecation of Date::Manip 5.xx tests
By default, the Date::Manip 5.xx tests will no longer run. Changes to the timezone data can cause failures. Since Date::Manip 5.xx is no longer supported in any way, these tests will no longer run on a system where 6.xx can be run. Richard Jelinek.
Deprecation of TZ postponed
The deprecation of the TZ variable has been postponed to March 2017. I decided that 1 year was not enough notice (especially since not everyone will have updated Date::Manip since March 2015 when the warning was added.
Bug fixes
Changed requirement for ExtUtils::MakeMaker to 6.67_01. RT 112286

Fixed a bug where a timezone abbreviation was not parsed correctly when passed in as a value to the SetDate, ForceDate, or TZ config variables. Based on a report in perlmonks.org.

Time zone fixes
Newest zoneinfo data (tzdata 2016d)

Made some improvements to how I handled the timezone data which resulted in a few of the default timezones being changed.

Documentation fixes
Fixed one more typo. RT 114095

Clarified the Config document. Based on a report in perlmonks.org.

VERSION 6.53 2016-03-02

Bug fixes
Date::Manip::Delta::cmp had a bug in it's comparison. Ian Gibbs.

The secs_since_1970_GMT method was missing a test to see if it was a valid object. RT 111915

Time zone fixes
Newest zoneinfo data (tzdata 2016a)
Documentation fixes
Lots of typos fixed. I was using podspell to do spell checking, but it was discarding too much real text (which wasn't getting checked as a result). Switched to pod2text which does a better job. RT 110025

VERSION 6.52 2015-12-01

Added date ranges on unmodified dates in Recur
The date range can now be specified for either the fully modified dates, or the unmodified dates. This will make it easier to work with holidays in some instances. Based on <http://perlmonks.org/?node_id=1148735>.
Added IWn and NWn recurrence modifiers
Based on <http://perlmonks.org/?node_id=1148735>.
(!) Reworked holidays slightly
Previously, every line in the Holidays section defined a unique holiday. Now, the names determine the list of holidays.

It is not allowed to have two separate holidays named exactly the same. It IS allowed to have complex holidays that require two (or more) lines in the Holidays section to define them completely.

Based on <http://perlmonks.org/?node_id=1148735>.

Bug fixes
Fixed a bug where the RecurRange config variable wasn't getting used.

Fixed a bug where some deltas were not parsed correctly as dates. RT 109600

Time zone fixes
Newest zoneinfo data (tzdata 2015g)
Test fixes
Added a number of new tests based on Devel::Cover.

VERSION 6.51 2015-09-01

Changes suggested by perlcritic
Played with perlcritic and made a few minor changes based on it's suggestions. I doubt I will use perlcritic significantly.
(!) Date::Manip::Delta::value now returns an empty string
If a delta has an error, or no valid delta in it, the value method returns an empty string instead of undef. This is to be consistent with the Date::Manip::Date::value method which returns an empty string.
Bug fixes
Fixed a bug where date/delta calculations with deltas that are too large was not working correctly. They now set an error condition and fail. RT 105737

Fixed a bug introduced by the previous patch and luckily discovered pre-release by Tom Wyant.

Fixed code that produced a warning in 5.22.0. Tom Wyant

Improved DM6 ParseDate and ParseDateString
Added @opts argument. Based on RT 105622.
Time zone fixes
Newest zoneinfo data (tzdata 2015f)

Now uses /etc/localtime as a method to determine the local timezone. Patch supplied in RT 105159 (modified by me). The patch uses some code derived from DateTime::TimeZone .

Clearer message when the date is not valid in the timezone.

Test fixes
Added a number of new tests based on Devel::Cover. Over the next several releases, I intend to continue to add tests until coverage is 100%.
Documentation fixes
Fixed a typo. RT 105546

VERSION 6.50 2015-06-01

Bug fixes
Not really a bug, but 6.49 got a bunch of NYTprof data bundled with it by mistake. It's been removed. RT 103252

Fixed a bug where information about whether a date was complete or truncated was discarded. Jim Avera

Fixed a bug where SetDate with a zone alias failed.

Added the Format_MMMYYYY config variable to allow the truncated format mmmYYYY to be parsed instead of mmmDDYY. David W. Morganwalp and RT 103142

Fixed Makefile.PL/Build.PL to correct for a change on perl on windows which changes a module prereq requirement. Alexandr Ciornii

Time zone fixes
Newest zoneinfo data (tzdata 2015d)

Added aliases for older HP-UX time zones. RT 104141

Documentation fixes
Fixed URL for tzdata. Mohammad S Anwar

Better POD formats.

Fixed a documentation error. RT 103966

VERSION 6.49 2015-03-01

Added a deprecation warning
The TZ config variable is going away. Added a deprecation warning.
Some speedups for timezone handling
Based on RT 102284, I have done some optimization of the timezone handling code.
Bug fixes
Added the missing is_date base method to Date::Manip::Base. Mario Domgoergen.
Time zone fixes
Newest zoneinfo data (tzdata 2015a)
Language fixes
A number of corrections by Nicholas Riley

VERSION 6.48 2014-12-01

Put repository on GitHub
Suggested by Gabor Szabo
parse_time now parses ISO 8601 times
The parse_time routine wouldn't correctly parse ISO 8601 times. This is now fixed.
Parsing special dates with timezones now works
Parsing special date formats with timezones is now supported such as:

   Christmas at noon PST
   in 3 days at noon PST
   now PST
   epoch 3000000 PST
dm_zdump modified
To match the newest version of zdump, the gmtoff is now added at the end of each line.
Bug fixes
Fixed a bug in the printf method that would not handle embedded newlines correctly (and resulted in an infinite loop if it were preceded by a '%'). Henrique Martins

Fixed a bug where '24:00' was not parsed correctly (though '24:00:00' was).

Fixed a bug where fractional values separated by a comma weren't parsed correctly.

Time zone fixes
Newest zoneinfo data (tzdata 2014j)

VERSION 6.47 2014-09-01

Time zone fixes
Newest zoneinfo data (tzdata 2014f)
Language fixes
Fixed some encoding errors in the language pod documentation.

VERSION 6.46 2014-07-08

Broken distribution
The distribution contained an temporary edit file that caused problems. RT 96459
Time zone fixes
Newest zoneinfo data (tzdata 2014e)
Language fixes
Added some plural abbreviations that were missing. RT 96944

VERSION 6.45 2014-06-05

Fixed a test
One test was failing (reported in RT 96249 as well as several CPAN Tester reports).

VERSION 6.44 2014-06-01

(*) Improvements to UTF8 handling
A number of changes based on RT 93545 and other discussion with Yuri Nikulin including:

Case insensitive matching of UTF8 strings should work all the time.

Fixed two significant bugs in regexps for parsing dates.

Improvements to UTF8 handling.

Corrected some problems with Russian and added the cp1251 encoding.

One correction to Romanian.

Added several new test scripts.

Preliminary patches were supplied by Yuri.

New features
Modified the parse_format function to return %+ if desired. Mike Cappella
Time zone fixes
Newest zoneinfo data (tzdata 2014c)
Documentation fixes
Clarified some DM6 functions. David Close.

Fixed a typo. RT 95619

VERSION 6.43 (2014-03-03)

Several changes to distribution files
I made several changes to Build.PL, Makefile.PL, META.yml in order to improve the quality (or kwalitee) of the module. None of these should impact anyone using the module.
Time zone fixes
Newest zoneinfo data (tzdata 2013i)
Documentation fixes
Cleaned up some of the Recur documentation. Suggested by RT 92794

VERSION 6.42 (2013-12-02)

Added ParseDateFormat function
Added the ParseDateFormat function to the DM6 functional interface in response to RT 89286.
Added Common Log format
Added the date format used in apache logs: 11/Oct/2000:13:55:36 -0700 RT 89286.
Time zone fixes
Newest zoneinfo data (tzdata 2013h)
Bug fixes
Fixed a bug where dates of the form of a delta with a timezone attached (i.e. ``1 day ago at midnight UTC'') failed. RT 89256

Fixed a bug where events handling gave a warning if there were no events that applied. RT 90344

VERSION 6.41 (2013-09-05)

Bug fixes
Removed a .swp file accidentally left in the package. RT 85845

Fixed a bug in parse_format where times between 00:00:00 and 01:00:00 weren't parsed correctly. Ole Nomann Thomsen

Fixed generated META.* files to not require Module::Build 0.39. RT 86137

Fixed a bug where parse_format did not work with a '%s' format. RT 87498

Fixed a bug where find_encoding wasn't imported from the Encode module. RT 87665

Fixed a bug where recurrences with no interval did not work if a start and end date were specified, and no dates fell in that range. Jan Pradac

Time zone fixes
Newest zoneinfo data (tzdata 2013d)

VERSION 6.40 (2013-06-01)

Removed PODs
POD documentation is no longer generated for Date::Manip::TZ::* and Date::Manip::Offset::* modules.
Time zone fixes
Newest zoneinfo data (tzdata 2013c)

VERSION 6.39 (2013-03-01)

Added the $mode argument to ParseDateDelta
The ParseDateDelta function (in functional interface) did not allow you to force a parsed delta to semi or approx where appropriate. This was added. Based on RT 82991).
Added get_config method
The get_config method was added to all classes. Suggested by Philippe Poilbarbe.
Language fixes
Fixed a German language problem. Gosta Oelstrom
Documentation fixes
Documented workaround for dmake problem in strawberry perl. Discussed on perlmonks and RT 79837.

Clarified the Examples page. Winston Heng

VERSION 6.38 (2013-01-08)

(*) Tar file format corrected
Problems were reported on several OSes by people unable to install Date::Manip (and other modules). It turns out that the version of tar distributed by my linux distro (OpenSuSE) uses the 'posix' format instead of the traditional 'gnu' format by default. This causes problems for some versions of tar. I have had reports from OSX, Windows, and SunOS. Future versions of Date::Manip will be explicitly distributed in the 'gnu' tar archive format.

Reported by Jay Allen and RT 80594.

(*) Date::Manip 5.xx end-of-life
Date::Manip 5.xx is now officially out of support. I will not be doing any further work on it. The only exception is that I will consider adding user supplied patches on a case-by-case basis.

If at all possible, please use Date::Manip 6.xx instead.

(!) Removed some deprecated config variables
The following config variables have been removed.

   IntCharSet
   RecurNumFudgeDays

VERSION 6.37 (2012-12-01)

Bug fixes
Fixed a bug where ISO 8601 format YYYY-WXX-D didn't work if the week ended up in December. Gordon Lugauer.
Time zone fixes
Newest zoneinfo data (tzdata 2012j)
Documentation fixes
Spelling error fixed. RT 80621

VERSION 6.36 (2012-10-31)

This was an interim release to fix the version numbers (6.35 was released with all of the version numbers 6.34).

VERSION 6.35 (2012-10-31)

This was an interim release to fix the problem with the PATH being replaced.
Removed dependency on YAML
I've reverted the language data files to perl literals instead of YAML. Though not quite as easy to maintain, it solves a few problems. Patch provided by Christopher Madsen.
Bug fixes
Last versions fix for RT 78566 overrode the PATH even when that wasn't appropriate. This is fixed. Report and patch supplied by RT 80435.

VERSION 6.34 (2012-09-04)

This is a bug fix so that the PATH won't break non-unix installs.
Bug fixes
Put the PATH inside the Unix section so it doesn't affect non-unix environments. Geoff Rowell

VERSION 6.33 (2012-09-01)

Improvements to Date::Manip::Delta
Added convert method. This had been planned since 6.30, but based on a discussion with Henrique Martins, I moved it up in priority.

Cleaned up handling of delta field lengths (they are now only calculated once.

Added cmp method. Henrique Martins

Bug fixes
The language modules read from the DATA section, but I never closed the filehandle. This is fixed now. Patch by Doru Theodor Petrescu

Added better loading of DM5/DM6 modules. RT 78512

Added a secure PATH to TZ.pm for taint reasons. In response to RT 78566

Time zone fixes
Now supports timezones in files with spaces where there should be underscores. This occurs in RHEL desktop. RT 78566

Newest zoneinfo data (tzdata 2012e)

Documentation fixes
Minor fix. Henrique Martins

VERSION 6.32 (2012-06-01)

Modified Build.PL
Build.PL now has better support for building (or not building) HTML files. Apparently this is slow on Windows. Patch provide in RT 75118.
Bug fixes
Fixed a bug in business day calculations. RT 76336

Fixed a bug where Delta/Recur objects weren't correctly created. Zsban Ambrus

Fixed a bug where SetDate/ForceDate config variables could not be included in a file. Jerry Wilcox

Time zone fixes
Newest zoneinfo data (tzdata 2012c).
Documentation fixes
Better support for UTF-8 in autogenerated language module pod files.

VERSION 6.31 (2012-03-01)

Added extended formats to printf method.
These include the %<A=NUM>, %<a=NUM>, %<v=NUM>, %<B=NUM>, %<b=NUM>, %<p=NUM>, and %<E=NUM> formats. Chris Jackson
Can now parse formats where the time and zone are not adjacent
A string like 'Jan 21 17:13:27 2010 -0400' can now be parsed. Requested on perlmonks ('Can Date::Manip parse a unix timestamp' thread).
Added PeriodTimeSep config variable.
This allows you to use a period as a time separator. Ed Avis
Holidays can be used as date strings
You can now parse a holiday name in the Date::Manip::Date::parse method. For example, parse('Christmas'). Requested by Abigail.
Added new recur modifiers
Added WDn, IBD, and NBD modifiers.
Added a new date format
You can now parse '2nd day in May' formats. Randy Harmon
More flexibility in parsing timezones with both offset and abbrev
If you include both the offset and abbreviation in the timezone portion of a date, the parenthesis around the abbreviation are now optional, so you can parse both:

   -04:00 (EDT)
   -04:00 EDT

Requested by Steven Melendez.

Deltas now support fractional values.
You can now use a delta of 1.5 days. RT 42699
Multiple holidays supported
A date may now have multiple holidays. Keith Minkler
Bug fixes
Fixed a bug where abbreviations were not being examined case insensitively. Jurgen Muck

The Holidays section may be safely split across multiple config files. A bug prevented this from working before.

Language fixes
The Norwegian translation was broken due to a typo in the language module.

Included complete documentation for each language.

Fixed a couple problems with Danish. Nicholas Oxhaj

Added Finnish (from a VERY old mail that I overlooked somehow). Iikka Virkkunen

Cleaned up the values used by printf directives to give the expected result.

Documentation fixes
Fixed a typo. Nicholas Bamber

VERSION 6.30 (2012-01-11)

(*) (!) Reworked deltas
Much of the delta code was reworked.

The constraint that a day is treated as 24 hours was removed (by adding the concept of semi-exact deltas) to better handle daylight saving time calculations.

Made cosmetic changes to which signs will be included in a delta to make the deltas more readable. Signs which are the same as the next higher field will be omitted, even if they cross set boundaries.

Added support for non-normalized deltas. See the $no_normalize option for the parse and set methods.

Removed limitations on subtract=2 not working with business calculations.

Thanks to discussion on perlmonks, and RT 65774 that prompted me to do this. I'd been wanting to do it for some time, but the discussion on perlmonks made me realize that this needed to be much higher priority.

(!) Modified Delta_Format
In conjunction with the above work, added the 'semi' mode to Delta_Format.
(!) Removed some deprecated config variables
The following config variables have been removed.

   GlobalCnf
   IgnoreGlobalCnf
   PersonalCnf
   PersonalCnfPath
   PathSep
   Internal
   DeltaSigns
   UpdateCurrTZ
   ConvTZ
   OldConfigFiles
   ResetWorkDay
Time zone fixes
Newest zoneinfo data (tzdata 2011n). RT 71595

Corrects a bug where +0000 and -0000 offsets were not parsed correctly. Aaron Hall

The zoneinfo data includes rules more than 20 years in the future, so we now store 30 years of future dates instead of 20 to catch these rules.

When parsing the timezone portion of the date, timezone abbreviations now take higher precedence than zone names (since that is how timezone information is typically specified). That only impacts dates where the a timezone name is the same as an abbreviation, such as 'CET'.

Previously, a date with CET in it was interpreted as in the CET timezone. Now it is interpreted as in a timezone with the CET abbreviation.

Better handling of undef in DM6
The date/delta parsing routines in DM6 will now handle an undef argument without issuing a warning. Earl C. Ruby III
Bug fixes
Fixed a bug with the parse_format %f and %i formats. Tommi Rintala

Fixed a bug where the Date::Manip::Delta::set function didn't work to set the month value.

Fixed a bug where parsing some dates near during a DST change failed.

Minor bug fix when using Delta_Format. Prompted while investigating RT 41095.

VERSION 6.25 (2011-08-31)

Relaxed one constraint in ISO 8601 dates
A time separated by whitespace from the date can use a single digit hour. Yuming Philip Xiang
(*) Set official removal dates for old config variables
Config variables will be removed 2 years after they are deprecated (except for the TZ variable which, due to it's wide use, will be kept for 4 years).
Time zone fixes
Newest zoneinfo data (tzdata 2011i)

VERSION 6.24 (2011-06-13)

New features
Spaces are ignored in the SetDate/ForceDate config values. Zsban Ambrus
Bug fixes
Fixed a bug where 'in one week' wasn't correctly parsed. E. M. Shtern

Fixed a bug where options passed in to the 'new' as a listref weren't handled properly. Zsban Ambrus

Time zone fixes
Newest zoneinfo data (tzdata 2011g)

VERSION 6.23 (2011-04-15)

(!) Renamed one Date::Manip::Recur method
The Date::Manip::Recur::base method has been renamed to basedate . The Date::Manip::Recur::base method should return the Date::Manip::Base object like all the other Date::Manip modules.
(*) Reworked holidays defined as recurrences
Improved dealing with the bootstrap problem of defining holidays, especially those that contain business day flags. Mike Tonks
New features
The printf function will now take multiple format strings and return a list of values. Zsban Ambrus
Bug fixes
Fixed a bug where GlobalCnf wasn't working. Peter Edwards

Improved error messages in a few cases.

Fixed a bug where one invalid date/timezone check was ignored. Morten Bjornsvik

Fixed a bug where '$base2 = new Date::Manip::Base $base1' wasn't working. RT 67143

Fixed a bug where passing dates in to the Recur->dates method failed. RT 67144

Fixed a bug where the mode wasn't being preserved correctly for a delta. RT 67150

Fixed a bug in recurrences where a base date outside of a date range with a very uncommon recurrence format would not work correctly.

Fixed a problem where the '%s' printf option didn't work in GMT. Jean-Michel Hiver

Time zone fixes
Newest zoneinfo data (tzdata 2011f)
Documentation fixes
Fixed two bad recurrence examples in the documentation. Peter Edwards and Mike Tonks

VERSION 6.22 (2011-03-07)

Time zone fixes
Newest zoneinfo data (tzdata 2011b)

Fixed a bug where the gmtoff method of getting the local timezone was broken. Martin Zinser.

Fixed the 'env' method of determining the local time zone to allow the value to be an offset of seconds since UTC. This allows the VMS SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL variable to work correctly. Martin Zinser.

Removed the SYS$TIMEZONE_RULE method from VMS since the value stored there is not the name of a timezone (it's a rule in a non-standard format). Based on discussion with Martin Zinser.

Improved the order in which aliases, abbreviations, etc., are tested to test current usage before non-current usage (there were a few cases where old usages were getting tested before current usage.

Language fixes
The module will now die if a language module cannot be loaded (most likely due to a YAML::Syck issue). Based on discussion with Martin Zinser.
Documentation fixes
Added a sample config file document. Based on discussion with Rich Duzenbury.

VERSION 6.21 (2011-01-10)

New features
Deltas may now contain spelled out numbers, so 'in 2 weeks' and 'in two weeks' will both work. Daniel Shahaf
Bug fixes
Fixed a bug where week_of_year didn't work in some cases. Chris Eveland.

Fixed a minor potential bug. Geraint Edwards.

Time zone fixes
Updated windows time zone aliases. Daniel Harding
Language fixes
Added Norwegian. Glenn Sogn

VERSION 6.20 (2010-12-01)

(*) (!) Reworked recurrences
Recurrences were reworked in a (slightly) backward incompatible way to improve their usefulness (and to make them conform to the expected results). Most recurrences will work the same as previously, but a few will differ. Most of this was suggested by Jay Jacobs.

A recurring event is now calculated relative to the base date, NOT relative to a previous event. For example, if a recurrence occurs every month, and the base date was Jan 31, then previously, recurring events would have been (in a non-leap year):

   D(0)                   = Jan 31
   D(1)  = D(0) + 1 month = Feb 28
   D(2)  = D(1) + 1 month = Mar 28
   ...

The new behavior is:

   D(0)                       = Jan 31
   D(1)  = D(0) + 1*(1 month) = Feb 28
   D(2)  = D(0) + 2*(1 month) = Mar 31
   ...

Previously, if a base date were not specified, it was not determined from the date range. Now, the start date of the date range acts as the base date.

The meaning of the base date has changed slightly. It is much more meaningful and useful now.

Added iterator functions. Daniel LaLiberte

The RecurNumFudgeDays variable is no longer used and is deprecated.

Time zone fixes
Newest zoneinfo data (tzdata 2010o)

VERSION 6.14 (2010-10-20)

(*) Date::Manip 5.xx fully integrated with 6.xx
Date::Manip 5.xx and 6.xx are both installed automatically, and the correct one will be chosen.
Bug fixes
Fixed a bug where recurrence handling was broken. RT 62128
Documentation fixes
A lot of documentation was cleaned up to be easier to read, and better organized.

VERSION 6.13 (2010-10-13)

New features
Added the input methods to Date::Manip::Date and Date::Manip::Delta. Ed Avis.

The 'date +%z' command will also be used to determine the timezone. Oliver Schulze

Bug fixes
Several changes to try to get rid of a memory leaks reported in RT 54937. Huge thanks to BrowserUK on perlmonks for help. Unfortunately, it ended up being a bug in perl, and will only be resolved when that bug is fixed. See the Date::Manip::Problems document for more information.

   Reorganized Base/TZ to get rid of circular references.
   Added end blocks to clean some global variables.
   Got rid of switch/given structures.

Fixed a bug where an incomplete date with 'last' in it was causing an error. RT 60138

Fixed a bug where 'Sunday, 9th Jan 1972' wasn't parsed correctly. RT 57832

Time zone fixes
Fixed a bug where Zones.pm was generated with the abbreviations in the wrong order. Amish Chana.
Language fixes
French month abbreviations now support periods. Bernard Haerri
Test fixes
Added tests from RT 29655 to make sure that the problem never recurs.
Documentation fixes
Fixed documentation problem with the new_* methods in Date::Manip::Obj. Options must be passed in as \@opts rather than @opts.

Cleaned up some of the documentation.

VERSION 6.12 (2010-09-27)

(!) IntCharSet config variable deprecated
With better support for international character sets, the old IntCharSet config variable (which was a bandaid at best) is deprecated. Currently, the functionality still exists, but it will be removed at some point.
New features
Added the Encoding config variable.

Now supports parsing the EXIF date format. Rhesa Rozendaal

Bug fixes
Fixed Build.PL to not require perl 5.010 since the distribution as a whole does not require that (and I want that fact to be in META.yml).

Fixed a bug where the Date::Manip::Date::set method was broken when setting individual fields. Helmut A. Bender

Fixed a bug where set didn't work in Date::Manip::Delta. Patch provided in RT 59096.

Time zone fixes
Newest zoneinfo data (tzdata 2010m)
Language fixes
(*) Converted all language files to UTF-8 and added rudimentary support for character encodings. Some assistance by Stephen Ostermiller.

Fixed problem in Polish, Dutch. Stephen Ostermiller

Extended support for 'nth' up to 53rd. Paco Regodon

Added some corrections to German. Dieter Lange

Documentation fixes
Clarified Date::Manip::Recur documentation based on RT 59132.

VERSION 6.11 (2010-04-30)

Bug fixes
Fixed a problem in Build.PL that had an incorrect module requirement.

VERSION 6.10 (2010-04-29)

(*) Combined 5.xx and 6.xx releases into one distribution
Because the automatic module management tools cpan/cpanp would try to upgrade Date::Manip to the most recent version, and the most recent version will only work if perl 5.10.0 or higher is installed, both the 5.xx and 6.xx releases are now combined into a single distribution.

This is described more fully in the Date::Manip::Problems document.

(!) Zones specified by offset
In all operations involving time zones, the time zone must be determined. By default, it would take all of the information available (date, ISDST, etc.) and determine the most likely time zone. It would take every time zone that matched each piece of information, starting with those that matched in a standard time followed by those that matched in a daylight saving time.

When zones are specified by an offset, a standard time would always match since there are standard time zones that match all year long (the military time zones A-Z and the standard time zones of the form Etc/GMT+01). As a result, a daylight saving time match would never occur.

Since (if the date falls during a daylight saving time period) you usually want to use a time zone that has that offset in daylight saving time, the default is now to check daylight saving time zones first, followed by standard times.

See the Date::Manip::TZ manual (under the zone method) for more information.

Bug fixes
Fixed a bug where Date_ConvTZ not working correctly with time zones specified by offset. Chris Butler

Fixed a bug where business mode calculations involving minutes was not handled correctly. Damien Moore

Fixed a bug where business mode calculations failed in some cases. RT 56638

Time zone fixes
Newest zoneinfo data (tzdata 2010i)

Changed Date::Manip::TZ::zone so ``dst'' is sometimes the default $dstflag. Based on the bug report by Chris Butler.

OpenUNIX puts a colon at the start of some time zones. It's removed. Jean Hassler

Test fixes
Converted tests to Test::Inter
Documentation fixes
Fixed a documentation bug in Date::Manip::TZ where ``stdonly'' was listed as the default value for $dstflag, but in actuality, ``std'' is the default.

VERSION 6.07 (2010-02-05)

Bug fixes
Fixed bug in Date_TimeZone where it wasn't returning the time zone. Robert Eden

VERSION 6.06 (2010-02-05)

Bug fixes
Minor bug where %Z printf format didn't always work.

Added support for 5pm back in (it was omitted accidentally). Mark Kennedy

Fixed a minor warning. Morten Bjoernsvik

Some additional speedups.

Time zone fixes
Newest zoneinfo data (tzdata 2010b)

Added dm_zdump example script.

Improved TZ::periods functionality

Fixed bug in Date_ConvTZ where empty values weren't defaulting to local time zone. Robert Eden

Fixed a couple of problems in the generated time zones for some odd cases (America/Resolute and Asia/Tehran).

VERSION 6.05 (2009-12-09)

(!) %z format
In Date::Manip 5.xx, the %z format in UnixDate printed the offset in the form -0500. In 6.00, I changed that to -05:00:00, but this broke RFC 822 compliance.

I've changed %z back to -0500, and introduced a new format (%N) which returns -05:00:00.

Incidentally, this is the LAST unused letter, so I am now going to have to either stop adding formats, or add some extended format syntax. Not sure yet which, but this may involve a backwards incompatible change in the future.

(*) Significant speedups.
Thanks to Moritz Lenz and BrowserUK on perlmonks for suggestions (and a number of other people on perlmonks for suggestions that I did not end up using, but which provided a great discussion).
Bug fixes
Fixed a bug in parse_date where the current time was getting used instead of the documented 00:00:00

Bug fix where DateCalc didn't work with $mode in some cases.

Fixed Makefile.PL/Build.PL to handle Win32::TieRegistry requirement.

Changed %z printf behavior back to 5.xx and added %N format. Gilles Lamiral

Added dm_date example script.

Time zone fixes
Fixed bug where non-English Windows versions didn't get the time zone. Thanks to Rene Schickbauer for testing.
Test fixes
Reduced the precision of 1 test to avoid a rounding difference when using a perl compiled with uselongdouble. Andreas Koenig

VERSION 6.04 (2009-11-25)

Bug fixes
Fixed a bug where events were not interpreted in the correct time zone if SetDate/ForceDate used.

VERSION 6.03 (2009-11-24)

Bug fixes
Corrects a backward incompatibility with UnixDate. Rene Schickbauer
Test fixes
A couple more corrections to the tests.

VERSION 6.02 (2009-11-24)

Bug fixes
Disabled curr_zone_methods when taint checking on. I believe that Date::Manip is completely taint friendly at this point.
Test fixes
A quick fix to make sure that the tests run correctly in other time zones.

VERSION 6.01 (2009-11-23)

Bug fixes
(*) Fixed a bug where dates were sometimes getting the wrong time zone when SetDate/ForceDate in effect.

VERSION 6.00 (2009-11-23)

Date::Manip 6.00 is a total rethink of the module, and a nearly complete rewrite. Please refer to the Date::Manip::Changes5to6 document for a list of incompatible changes.
Reorganization
(*) Massive reorganization and near total rewrite.

(*) Broke into several smaller modules

New Features
(*) Full time zone support (using tzdata 2009s)

Added some functionality (suggested by James Elson to improve setting the ``current time''. Done with the ForceDate config variable.

(*) Converted languages to YAML for much easier maintenance. Patch and suggestion provided by Evan Carroll

Added much better formats for deltas. Suggested by Jim Hranicky.

Borrowed the _FindWindowsTZName function from the DateTime-TimeZone module.

Added SetDate config variable (based on a suggestion by Christian Campbell).

Added parse_format which was first suggested by Kim Ryan.

Other changes
Several config variables deprecated

Thanks to Jonathan Hogue for helping test Windows additions.

Bug fixes (correcting problems in the 5.xx releases)
Fixed a bug where ``YYtoYYYY=c'' wouldn't work.

VMS bugfix to not call `date` command. Lane

New Year's Day defined using a recurrence which might push the observed day to the previous year was broken. Reported by Jerry Wilcox.

Language fixes
Fixed typo in Turkish translation.

Spelling fix in Dutch. Bart Van Loon

Additional credits
I have received many suggestions over time which were automatically handled during the 6.00 rewrite. Although the changes weren't made because of the suggestions specifically, I wanted to acknowledge them since I appreciate the suggestions.

I believe the first person to suggest writing Date::Manip as an OO module was Eduard Derksen.

Delta_Format initialization done outside of the function. Eric Boehm

Added $subtract to calculation routines. First suggested by Steve Berlage.

Added ability to set individual parts of the date (Date::Manip::Date::set). First suggested by Martin Thurn.

UnixDate (i.e. Date::Manip::Date::printf) only calculates formats when they are needed. Eduard Derksen

Parsing will skip some date/time formats if requested. This was first suggested by Eduard Derksen.

It has been suggested several times to support multiple languages, multiple config files, or multiple sets of Date_Init options. These suggestions (by Meng Fang, Ed Avis, Christian Campbell, and perhaps others) were at the back of my mind as I developed the Date::Manip::Base class.

The regular expressions are all i18n friendly in anticipation of much better support for localization. First suggested by Alex Kapranoff.

Parsing a date ('today', 'Monday') gives a time of '00:00:00'. Suggested by Mark Aitchison.

Working with fractional days was suggested by Peter van Hardenberg. This is implemented in Date::Manip::Base::day_of_year method.

BUGS AND QUESTIONS

Please refer to the Date::Manip::Problems documentation for information on submitting bug reports or questions to the author.

LICENSE

This script is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

AUTHOR

Sullivan Beck ([email protected])