So, having quite successfully derailed the previous attempt, lets try again. I want use POSIX qw( strptime ); to work. I further want it to have actually-useful semantics, which as demonstrated POSIX::strptime::strptime and Time::Piece::strptime both lack. Ideally I'd prefer the former of these two semantics, as to most closely match the POSIX/C API, but given this was such a point of argument last time, I'd be happy to accept either of these in Perl: my @time = localtime; strptime $str, $fmt, \@time my @time = strptime $str, $fmt, localtime; Can we have a little consensus these? ----- Furthermore, I don't think we got to the bottom of how to handle partial parsing. E.g. I'd like somehow to get the number "10" out of this code: strptime "2011-08-30 and here is more of the string", "%Y-%m-%d" (10 because the space after 30 is the 10th position, so I'd like to continue parsing from here). Additionally it'd be lovely if I could parse the following by simply knowing the number 12 rather than applying a substr operation first: strptime substr("The date is 2011-08-30", 12), "%Y-%m-%d" I posit both can be done with (ab)use of pos(). Opinions? -- Paul "LeoNerd" Evans leonerd@leonerd.org.uk ICQ# 4135350 | Registered Linux# 179460 http://www.leonerd.org.uk/Thread Next