This is the continuation of a discussion that started 9 months ago, and went like this: I proposed that, rather than living in a chaos of Perl date/time modules, we should have, as a goal, to get to one commonly accepted foundation module on top of which all other date functions would be built. Rich Bowen kindly answered that he _had_ contacted the date/time modules authors before, and that it was "abundantly clear that there is no desire to cooperate on a unified set of Date/Time modules" (both messages should be in the archives).
I found Rich Bowen's answer convincing, but I also happened to discover another possible way out of the chaos. However, during these last nine months, my interests have shifted, and I have no more intention to work with Perl dates. But I thought that, for completeness, I should tell you about the possible alternative in case anyone finds any value in it. (However, the information I'll give might be somewhat outdated, since I don't know whether there's been any relative change in 5.8 or so.) If one of the date/time modules were standard, and all the other ones were optional, this would be a strong indication that the standard module is the preferred one. Alternatively, the Perl FAQ could encourage using a specific module rather than others. If this could be done, then everyone could continue to use their own choice of chaotic modules, whether for backwards compatibility or for love of chaos, but Perl newcomers and Perl programmers writing new programs would probably get used to the standard module. That's the basic idea. Now I don't know how top management works (i.e. how it is decided which modules are standard or what goes into the FAQ), but it is interesting that Larry Wall once showed some interest on the date/time problem. He seems to believe that the standard date/time Perl interface is not good, and he proposed a new interface. You can find his message at http://www.xray.mpe.mpg.de/mailing-lists/perl5-porters/2000-01/msg00241.html. Matt Sergeant subsequently implemented Larry Wall's idea into the Time::Piece module, which you can install and man for more information. I think that Time::Piece's interface is simple enough and powerful enough, and that it is good foundation for building more complex date handling (such as date parsing) on top of it. And due to the community's and Larry Wall's interest in the Perl date problem, it could become standard. Now I have a strange feeling that, for some of you, this is hardly any news; and if it is not, then there is a problem with the mailing lists, that is, the problem is being discussed on some list which I had failed to find, despite the fact that I had searched much 9 months ago, only to find [EMAIL PROTECTED], which still leaves me the feeling that someone's discussing these things elsewhere.
