Support %- variant for strftime

[tbm]

I just found out that you can use %- to strip leading zeros, e.g.

$ date +%Y/%-m/%d
2019/1/16

Unfortunately, this is not supported by DateTime::Format::Strptime:

use DateTime::Format::Strptime qw(strftime);

my $date = DateTime::Format::Strptime->new(
    pattern  =>  "%Y/%-m/%d",
    on_error => "croak",
);

my $p = $date->parse_datetime("2015/5/30");
print strftime("%F", $p), "\n" if $p;

[autarch]

Hi Martin,

I've not seen this variation before and my system's strptime man page doesn't mention it. The strftime man page does document this as a glibc extension, saying:

       -      (dash) Do not pad a numeric result string.

There's really no need for this on the parsing side. The %m specifier will parse a value with or without a leading zero (as will similar specifier for days, hours, etc.).

The strftime exported by this package is just a small wrapper around DateTime's built-in strftime method. A patch to add support for this (ideally with the other glibc extensions as well) would be welcome.

I'm going to move this issue to the https://github.com/houseabsolute/DateTime.pm repo.

[tbm]

There's really no need for this on the parsing side. The %m specifier will parse a value with or without a leading zero

That's good to know. I didn't realize that but can confirm that it works.

However, if I use %-m the parser doesn't parse it, probably because it doesn't recognize %-m, so I'd say the parser still needs to be taught about the minus variant.

[autarch]

However, if I use %-m the parser doesn't parse it, probably because it doesn't recognize %-m, so I'd say the parser still needs to be taught about the minus variant.

But as I said, this is not a thing for the strptime function in glibc. I don't think it makes sense to deviate from that.

[tbm]

But as I said, this is not a thing for the strptime function in glibc. I don't think it makes sense to deviate from that.

Sorry, I didn't get what you were saying. I understand now. Thanks for the clarification.