#include <sys/types.h> typedef struct _TIMEINFO { time_t time; long usec; long tzone; } TIMEINFO; time_t parsedate(text, now) char *text; TIMEINFO *now;
Parsedate returns the time, or -1 on error. Text is a character string containing the time and date. Now is a pointer to the time that should be used for calculating relative dates. If now is NULL, then GetTimeInfo in libinn(3) is used to obtain the current time and timezone.
The character string consists of zero or more specifications of the following form:.
Parsedate ignores case when parsing all words; unknown words are taken to be unknown timezones, which are treated as GMT. The names of the months and days of the week can be abbreviated to their first three letters, with optional trailing period. Periods are ignored in any timezone or meridian values.
Daylight savings time is always taken as a one-hour change which is wrong for some places. The daylight savings time correction can get confused if parsing a time within an hour of when the reckoning changes, or if given a partial date.
A major overhaul was done by Rich $alz <rsalz@bbn.com> and Jim Berets <jberets@bbn.com> in August, 1990.
It was further revised (primarily to remove obsolete constructs and timezone names) a year later by Rich (now <rsalz@osf.org>) for InterNetNews, and the name was changed. This is revision 1.1.1.1, dated 1997/08/04.