Like most programming languages, PHP comes with a fairlyfull-featured API for date and time value manipulation. You've probablyused it in your applications, but never bothered to look too closely atit. Well, here's your chance to rectify that mistake - this articledelves into the date/time API in depth, uncovering some hidden nuggetsand demonstrating how it can be used to simplify date and timeprocessing in your PHP scripts.
Some once famously said, "the more things change, the more they remain the same". And nowhere is this more true than in the area of programming languages.
No matter what your poison may be - Perl, PHP, Python, JSP - every language comes with certain fundamental constructs and concepts that are widely-understood and used. For example, though they may be called by different names, almost every language comes with string, numeric and array variables, conditional tests, loops, functions, exception handlers et al. This commonality makes it possible for experienced developers to easily switch from one development environment to another. This switch is not necessarily instant - the devil is still in the details - but a sound understanding of basic programming principles can go a long way to make it more painless.
What does this have to do with anything? Well, almost every language - including PHP, which is the subject of this article - comes with certain basic capabilities for date and time value manipulation. These capabilities may be implemented as functions, objects or object methods, but they do exist, in more or less similar form, in almost every language. And, over the course of this article, I'll be looking at how they work, and how they can be used to add something new to your bag of PHP tricks.
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