strtotime() won't work with american-style dates...

[stapler]

searched for a while but can't find out where to configure this...I want to convert a date string like "2-15-08" to a standardized "mm/dd/yyyy" format, i.e. "02/15/2008", so I thought I could do date("m/d/Y", strtotime("2-15-08")) but for some reason strtotime() is only working for me if it's a european date style, i.e. "15-2-08"...my time zone is properly set to central time, and, if it's at all relevant, date_ default_ timezone_ get() returns "American/Chicago" so it knows I'm in the US....what n00b thing am I missing here? thanks.

[cooldude832]

strtotime is very fussy about its stuff

 

if your date is consitently in  m/dd/yy

you can try treating it as a string, exploding it at the "/" and then reforming into a tiemstamp with the mktime() function.

 

 

strtotime should really only be used for its "+1 day", "-1 year" ability to adjust times and minimal other cases.

[stapler]

thanks, it looks like I should go that route. I also discovered it wasn't an american/european thing, since it works fine with "2-15-2008", so it's the 2-digit year it doesn't like...

[cooldude832]

there is a lotta stuff it doesn't like which is why I basically treated it as the blacksheep to the php date family.  mktime is so much easier + you can always check consitentcy of values like saying

<?php
$date = "12/2/2008";
list($month,$day,$year) = explode("/",$date);
if(intval($month) < 1 || intval($month) >12){
#invalid month
}
if(intval($day) <28 || intval($day) >31){
#invalid day
}

[kenrbnsn]

When strtotime() sees a string with dashes between the numbers it assumes it's in the format of yyyy-mm-dd or yy-mm-dd

 

2-15-2008 doesn't work, when it test with

<?php
        echo date('m/d/Y',strtotime($argv[1])) . "\n";
?>

Using the CLI version, I get

$ php -q -f testdt.php 2008-02-15
02/15/2008
$ php -q -f testdt.php 15-02-08
02/08/2015
$ php -q -f testdt.php 2-15-2008
12/31/1969
$ php -q -f testdt.php 08-08-08
08/08/2008
$ php -q -f testdt.php 08-07-06
07/06/2008
$ php -q -f testdt.php 2-15-2008
12/31/1969

 

Ken

[stapler]

thanks for illuminating this. I went with the mktime function and it works exactly as desired now