From: smejmoon@... (G'irts Kalnins)
Date: 2004-04-01T01:44:21+09:00
Subject: How to get internal state of DateTime in seconds

How do you get internal state in seconds of DateTime instance? 
Or convert it to Time instance? 

I want to compare two times with variable precision.
Below is my try to parse time from Common Log Format.

require 'date'
str1 = '20/Nov/2003:08:08:09 +0200'
str2 = '20/Nov/2003:08:04:09 +0200'
t1 = DateTime.strptime(str=str1, fmt='%d/%b/%Y:%H:%M:%S %Z')
t2 = DateTime.strptime(str=str2, fmt='%d/%b/%Y:%H:%M:%S %Z')

#what is difference in minutes between these 2 times?

#example with Time instances
t1 = Time.new
t2 = Time.new + 2*60 #2 minutes later

puts (t1-t2).abs > 60 #diff more than minute