From: Rick DeNatale <rick.denatale@...>
Date: 2009-09-25T21:29:41+09:00
Subject: Re: Parsing dates

On Fri, Sep 25, 2009 at 1:38 AM, Ehsanul Hoque <ehsanul_g3@hotmail.com> wrot>
>> When I do this:
>>
>> dob="05/01/1968"
>> x=Date.parse(dob)
>> x.month
>>
>> I get 1 instead of 5.
>> How do I do this?
>>
>
> Well, it's not a bug or something. The rest of the world uses day/month/year so that is the default that the Date.parse method uses.
>
> The easiest solution (and the best way to do this IMO) is to just feed the method "01/05/1968" instead of "05/01/1968".
>
> If for some reason, you HAVE to have the m/d/y format, you could just use a regexp. Could be something like this, but note, it's not really the best regexp, just something I came up with now (you can use rubular.com to figure out ruby regexps easily):
>
> dob = "05/01/1968"
> dob =~([01]\d)\/([0-3]\d)\/((19|20)\d\d)

Or better, IMHO, use strptime

require 'date'
d = Date.strptime("05/01/1968", "%m/%d/%Y")

d.month #=> 5
d.day    #=> 1
d.year  #=> 1968

Works for DateTime as well as Date

-- 
Rick DeNatale

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