date calculation

[Anon]

i'm not to familiar with the date() so please bear with me...
i'm creating a calendar program, i am looking for a quick way to determine when the month starts...monday, tues, etc...
and how long it is(leap years included)
thanks

[Anon]

i'm not too familiar with the date()

Well, the way to get familiar is to study the manual page. For example, the list of format-characters in the date() manual page includes:

  t - number of days in the given month; i.e. "28" to "31"

which is one of the things you need.

The day-of-week of the first of the month is more complicated. I don't know any way to get that other than the brute-force method of:

1. Get the current date, and split it into its components.

2. Create a new timestamp for the first of the month using mktime().

3. Now get the day-of-week of the first by using date() on the new
   timestamp instead of the current date.

[Anon]

Actually that would be fairly easy:
$firstdayofthemonth = date("l", mktime (0,0,0,date("m"),1,date("Y")));