[RESOLVED] date comparison issue...

[efficacious]

Hello all,

I'm having a problem comparing some dates..

First off, wouldn't you think that

10-09-2008

is the exact same as

10-9-08

Well it doesn't come out that way for me

I'm taking similar values and using

strtotime(); function..

And I can't get it to read those values as the same.

Any suggestions?

code:

	$Time1="10-9-08";
	$Time2="10-09-2008";

$FTime1=strtotime($Time1);
$FTime2=strtotime($Time2);

echo("<script>alert('".$FTime1." - ".$FTime2."');</script>");

if($FTime1==$Ftime2)
{
	echo("<script>alert('SUCCESS!');</script>");
}
else
{
	echo("<script>alert('FAIL!');</script>");		
}

[laserlight]

The problem is that there is more than one way to interpret a date string, and it so happens that the interpretation was not what you expected. For a better understanding of the problem, try running:

<?php
$Time1="10-9-08";
$Time2="10-09-2008";

$FTime1=strtotime($Time1);
$FTime2=strtotime($Time2);

echo date('d-m-Y', $FTime1) . '<br />';
echo date('d-m-Y', $FTime2) . '<br />';

if ($FTime1 == $FTime2)
{
    echo("SUCCESS!");
}
else
{
    echo("FAIL!");
}
?>

[efficacious]

well thats a pain in the ass...so now I have to run a whole complex filtering function just to get them in the same exact syntax.

why would they set it up to read it all scewy like that..?

everywhere you look its the same format mm/dd/yyyy or mm/dd/yy

[laserlight]

everywhere you look its the same format mm/dd/yyyy or mm/dd/yy

Not really. Here in Singapore we typically use dd/mm/yy and dd/mm/yyyy. I believe this is inherited from the British. In chess PGN notation, we use yyyy.mm.dd, which makes sorting by date string pretty easy. This "big-endian" format is used elsewhere with that sorting benefit (or even just for that purpose) as well, and presumably it is shortened to yy/mm/dd in some cases.

[efficacious]

ok well wheres the american strtotime function lol damn....

Well do you have any suggestions on how to easily convert that 10-9-08 to the same format as 10-09-2008?

[laserlight]

Well do you have any suggestions on how to easily convert that 10-9-08 to the same format as 10-09-2008?

Here is one way:

<?php
$Time1="10-9-08";
$Time2="10-09-2008";

$time_parts = explode('-', $Time1);
$FTime1 = mktime(0, 0, 0, $time_parts[1], $time_parts[0], '20' . $time_parts[2]);
$FTime2 = strtotime($Time2);

echo date('d-m-Y', $FTime1) . '<br />';
echo date('d-m-Y', $FTime2) . '<br />';

if ($FTime1 == $FTime2)
{
    echo("SUCCESS!");
}
else
{
    echo("FAIL!");
}
?>

[efficacious]

anyone else have problem loggin into this forum???

I just had to put in my login info like 20 times before it finally logged me in

any way

OK.. took some some work but I got it going... turns out I already had some code in place that exploded that date and put in it 3 strips.. I needed it in readable format first tho.. so I didn't use mktime..

This topic is solved

$CountS2=strlen($Strip2);
$FStrip2= ($CountS2==1) ?  "0".$Strip2 : $Strip2;
$FSelectedDate	=$S_Month."-".$FStrip2."-".$Strip3;