before the system's epoch may not work on all operating systems.  The
time formats recognized are the same as for parse_date().

The function also takes an optional second argument that specifies the
default time zone to use when converting the date.  This parameter is
ignored if the zone is found in the date string itself.  If this
parameter is missing, and the date string format does not contain any
zone specification, then the local time zone is assumed.

If the zone is not "C<GMT>" or numerical (like "C<-0800>" or
"C<+0100>"), then the C<Time::Zone> module must be installed in order
to get the date recognized.

=item parse_date( $str )

This function will try to parse a date string, and then return it as a
list of numerical values followed by a (possible undefined) time zone
specifier; ($year, $month, $day, $hour, $min, $sec, $tz).  The $year
returned will B<not> have the number 1900 subtracted from it and the
$month numbers start with 1.

In scalar context the numbers are interpolated in a string of the
"YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss TZ"-format and returned.

If the date is unrecognized, then the empty list is returned.

The function is able to parse the following formats:

 "Wed, 09 Feb 1994 22:23:32 GMT"       -- HTTP format
 "Thu Feb  3 17:03:55 GMT 1994"        -- ctime(3) format
 "Thu Feb  3 00:00:00 1994",           -- ANSI C asctime() format
 "Tuesday, 08-Feb-94 14:15:29 GMT"     -- old rfc850 HTTP format
 "Tuesday, 08-Feb-1994 14:15:29 GMT"   -- broken rfc850 HTTP format

 "03/Feb/1994:17:03:55 -0700"   -- common logfile format
 "09 Feb 1994 22:23:32 GMT"     -- HTTP format (no weekday)
 "08-Feb-94 14:15:29 GMT"       -- rfc850 format (no weekday)
 "08-Feb-1994 14:15:29 GMT"     -- broken rfc850 format (no weekday)

 "1994-02-03 14:15:29 -0100"    -- ISO 8601 format
 "1994-02-03 14:15:29"          -- zone is optional
 "1994-02-03"                   -- only date
 "1994-02-03T14:15:29"          -- Use T as separator
 "19940203T141529Z"             -- ISO 8601 compact format
 "19940203"                     -- only date

 "08-Feb-94"         -- old rfc850 HTTP format    (no weekday, no time)
 "08-Feb-1994"       -- broken rfc850 HTTP format (no weekday, no time)
 "09 Feb 1994"       -- proposed new HTTP format  (no weekday, no time)
 "03/Feb/1994"       -- common logfile format     (no time, no offset)

 "Feb  3  1994"      -- Unix 'ls -l' format
 "Feb  3 17:03"      -- Unix 'ls -l' format

 "11-15-96  03:52PM" -- Windows 'dir' format

The parser ignores leading and trailing whitespace.  It also allow the
seconds to be missing and the month to be numerical in most formats.

If the year is missing, then we assume that the date is the first
matching date I<before> current month.  If the year is given with only
2 digits, then parse_date() will select the century that makes the
year closest to the current date.

=item time2iso( [$time] )

Same as time2str(), but returns a "YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss"-formatted
string representing time in the local time zone.

=item time2isoz( [$time] )

Same as time2str(), but returns a "YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ssZ"-formatted
string representing Universal Time.


=back

=head1 SEE ALSO

L<perlfunc/time>, L<Time::Zone>

=head1 COPYRIGHT

Copyright 1995-1999, Gisle Aas

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

=cut