                     =====================================
                       Package "Date::Pcalc" Version 6.1
                     =====================================


                  Copyright (c) 1995 - 2009 by Steffen Beyer.
                             All rights reserved.


Example applications:
---------------------

You will find some example programs (several in Perl, one in C)
in the "examples" subdirectory of this distribution:

                        examples/age_in_days_eu.pl
                        examples/age_in_days_us.pl
                        examples/anniversaries.pl
                        examples/cal.c
                        examples/calendar.pl
                        examples/datecalc.pl
                        examples/delta.pl
                        examples/holidays.pl
                        examples/income.pl
                        examples/linearcal.pl
                        examples/nth_weekday.pl
                        examples/time.pl
                        examples/vacation.pl
                        examples/weiberfastnacht.pl


age_in_days_eu.pl, age_in_days_us.pl:
-------------------------------------

"age_in_days_eu.pl" and "age_in_days_us.pl" are a demonstration of the
multi-language capabilities of this package, as well as of its scanning
capabilities for dates.

First build and install this package (for instructions, see the file
"INSTALL.txt" in this distribution), then change directory to the
"examples" subdirectory, and finally start these two demo programs
with
                        % perl age_in_days_eu.pl
and
                        % perl age_in_days_us.pl
respectively.

They first ask you to choose a language; any uniquely identifying
abbreviation for one of the first six languages supported by this
package (English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch) will
suffice, like "en" for "English", "es" for "Español" (Spanish),
"f" for "Français" (French), and so on.

These applications then ask you to enter the date of your birthday.

The two applications only differ in the expected format for dates:
In "age_in_days_eu.pl", the order day-month-year is assumed, whereas
"age_in_days_us.pl" assumes the order month-day-year.

For the month you can (at your option) either enter the corresponding
number, or any uniquely identifying abbreviation of the month's name
(or the name of the month in full length) IN THE CHOSEN LANGUAGE.

Moreover, virtually any format for dates is supported:

Examples include "03/01/64", "3.1.1964", "January 3rd, 1964", "030164",
and so on.

Experiment!

Note that the scanning itself is actually performed by two powerful
routines written in C, and not using the regular expressions from Perl
(which would make this task rather trivial in Perl, but which wouldn't
be easily accessible to C programmers).

After confirming your entry, the program will print out your age in days.

If the system call "time()" (and hence, "localtime()") is not available
on your system, the program will also ask you to enter today's date.

Otherwise the program will automatically use the system-supplied current
date.


anniversaries.pl:
-----------------

This script demonstrates how one can use the Date::Pcalendar module to
get a list of anniversaries for the next couple of weeks.

If you run this program from the login script of your shell, you will
always get this list when you log in, and you will never ever forget
a birthday or anniversary again! (At least you won't have an excuse
anymore. :-) )

Your dear loving wife or husband will appreciate it! ;-)

Example output (on October 3rd, 2001):

  +13 days :  Tue 16-Oct-2001  (31)  Cousin Paul
  +18 days :  Sun 21-Oct-2001  (28)  Sister Catherine
  +88 days :  Sun 30-Dec-2001  (30)  Spouse


cal.c:
------

This little program is a substitute for the UNIX "cal" command.

In contrast to the UNIX "cal" command, however, this program allows you
to choose a language which will be used for generating the calendar for
the chosen month and year.

(Also in contrast to the UNIX "cal" command, this program will NOT
generate a tiled overview of ALL the months for a given year, however.)

Moreover, you can (at your option) either enter the number of the desired
language, or any uniquely identifying abbreviation of its name (or the name
in full length).

For the month you can also (at your option) either enter the corresponding
number, or any uniquely identifying abbreviation of the month's name (or
the name of the month in full length) *IN THE CHOSEN LANGUAGE*.

In order to compile this little program, first copy the file "cal.c" from
the "examples" subdirectory to the main directory of this distribution.

BEWARE that you should REMOVE this file ("cal.c") from the MAIN directory
of this distribution BEFORE building this package (i.e., before issuing
the command "perl Makefile.PL"), because you may get compiler or runtime
errors (like "duplicate main() function") otherwise. At the very least,
this will inflate your shared library ("Pcalc.so") unnecessarily if you
don't.

In order to successfully compile the "cal.c" program, you do NOT need
to build the Date::Pcalc package first, however.

Then change directory to the main directory of this distribution,
if you haven't done so already.

Finally, if you have Perl available on your system (no matter whether
UNIX or Win32), you can compile this program with the following command:

            % perl tools/compile.pl cal.c DatePcalc.c
or
            % perl tools\compile.pl cal.c DatePcalc.c

Otherwise, if you have the GNU C compiler ("gcc") available on your system,
you can also do so (UNIX only) using the command

            % ./tools/compile.sh cal.c DatePcalc.c

On a MSDOS/Windows system, if your ANSI C compiler can be called with "cl",
you can also compile the program using the command

            % tools\compile cal DatePcalc.c

(Note the missing ".c" at the end of the filename "cal" in this case!)

Otherwise, compile the program with your favourite ANSI C compiler in a
similar fashion.

In case you have already built the Date::Pcalc package, you can simply
say
            % perl tools/compile.pl cal.c DatePcalc.o

(note the "o" at the end of the line instead of a "c") or

            % perl tools\compile.pl cal.c DatePcalc.obj

under Windows.

Now start the program with the command "./cal" (UNIX) or simply "cal"
(MSDOS/Windows).

(Note that this program is not confined to Win32 systems, it also compiles
and runs perfectly well on pure MS-DOS or other Windows systems!)

The first parameter is the desired language (currently 1..11 or "English",
"Français", "Deutsch", "Español", "Português", "Nederlands", "Italiano",
"Norsk", "Svenska", "Dansk" and "suomi"), the second the month and the
third the year.

Example:
                        % cal en apr 1998

This will print:

                            April 1998
                    Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun
                              1   2   3   4   5
                      6   7   8   9  10  11  12
                     13  14  15  16  17  18  19
                     20  21  22  23  24  25  26
                     27  28  29  30

If you start the "cal" program without parameters, it will print a usage
and exit.

Experiment!

If you like this program, you might want to copy it to some directory in
your search path, like "/usr/local/bin" (UNIX) or "C:\DOS" or "C:\WinNT"
(MSDOS/Windows).

If you are running this program on a PC (e.g. MS-DOS, Windows DOS box,
GNU/Linux or FreeBSD console), you might want to pipe its output through
the "iso2pc" filter from the "tools" subdirectory (see the file "TOOLS.txt"
in this distribution for instructions on how to compile and install this
filter), in order to convert the special international characters from
the ISO-Latin-1 character set (used throughout this package) to one of
the (two) character sets commonly used on PC's, as follows:

                    % cal Portug Mar 1998 | iso2pc [-dos]

(for older versions of MS-DOS and the PC-UNIX console) or

                    % cal Portug Mar 1998 | iso2pc -win

(for newer versions of MS-DOS and the Win32 DOS box).


calendar.pl:
------------

This CGI script demonstrates the capabilities of the new "Pcalendar::*"
modules.

See http://www.engelschall.com/u/sb/calendar/ for a "live" example of
this script and play around with it at leisure!

The script allows you to select a language, a calendar profile, a start
"Year and Month" or start "Week and Year" and displays a calendar for the
chosen month, or for 4 consecutive weeks starting with the chosen week,
for the chosen location (calendar profile) and in the chosen language.

(The language setting only affects the names of months and days of week,
though! The language of the names of the holidays and commemorative days
is determined by the calendar profiles themselves.)

Alternately, you can choose to display a whole year, either only the
true holidays (i.e., the days on which you get a day off, that is, all
official holidays which do not fall on a Saturday or Sunday), or all
the days for which the corresponding profile has names stored in it
(official holidays as well as commemorative days).

Choosing one of these two options (radio buttons) overrides the "Year
and Month" or "Week and Year" mode of operation, but nevertheless takes
its year argument from the selected entry field (and simply drops the
"Month" or "Week" value).

(Since the two year numbers in either mode might not be the same, be
careful which mode you choose and which input field you type into!)

Saturdays, Sundays and official holidays will be marked in red, "half"
holidays will be marked in purple. Workdays are printed in black.

Optionally, the days of week which form the "weekend" (default: Saturday
and Sunday) can be configured using the corresponding checkboxes.

All the names associated with each day (the names of official holidays
as well as purely commemorative days) are displayed to the right of
each day.

Please report any errors you find in the calendar profiles (or in this
script) back to me!

There is a "mailto:" hyperlink at the bottom of the generated page for
this purpose.

Thank you very much in advance!


datecalc.pl:
------------

This CGI script lets you perform simple date calculations, as if it
was some sort of pocket calculator.

You can either add a year, month and/or day offset to a given date,
or calculate the difference in years, months and days between two
given dates.

See http://www.engelschall.com/u/sb/datecalc/ for a "live" example
of this script to play around with!


delta.pl:
---------

This is a little program which contains a routine to determine the
number of business days between two dates. It is not of much practical
value, because it doesn't take legal holidays into account (use the
method "delta_weekdays()" in the module Date::Pcalendar[::Year] if you
want to do that, or see the examples "income.pl" and "vacation.pl"
below).

Moreover, it assumes that counting includes the earlier of the two
dates, but not the later one. I.e., if you determine the number of
business days between, for example, two consecutive days, like for
instance a Friday and a Saturday, the routine will return a difference
of one business day as the result. If you take a Sunday and Monday, on
the other hand, however, it will give you a difference of zero business
days.

The program expects six parameters on the command line, i.e., two dates
in the order year, month, day, in chronological order (the result will
be negative if you swap the two dates, but the routine won't go backwards
in time, i.e., it still counts the earlier date if it is a business day,
but not the later one). If the number of command line parameters is not
six, the program prints a usage and exits.

Here's an example of how it can be used:

                    % perl delta.pl 1999 12 24 2000 1 8

                    Fri 24-Dec-1999
                    Sat 8-Jan-2000

                           December 1999
                    Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun
                              1   2   3   4   5
                      6   7   8   9  10  11  12
                     13  14  15  16  17  18  19
                     20  21  22  23  24  25  26
                     27  28  29  30  31


                           January 2000
                    Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun
                                          1   2
                      3   4   5   6   7   8   9
                     10  11  12  13  14  15  16
                     17  18  19  20  21  22  23
                     24  25  26  27  28  29  30
                     31

                    Difference: 11 Business Days.

(The program prints the calendars of the respective months so that you
can verify its results.)


holidays.pl:
------------

This utility generates a list of all holidays and commemorative
days for a given year and location.

It also shows how to temporarily change the language and date
string format, produce some output, and restore the old values.

Given a year number, the name of a language and the name of one
of the predefined calendar profiles, this subroutine prints a list
of all holidays in the given year, such as in the following example:

:> perl holidays.pl 2001 de sdm-MUC

Mon 01-Jan-2001 + Neujahr
Sam 06-Jan-2001 + Dreikönigstag
Don 22-Feb-2001 - Fettdonnerstag, Weiberfastnacht
Mon 26-Feb-2001 - Rosenmontag
Die 27-Feb-2001 - Karnevalsdienstag
Mit 28-Feb-2001 - Aschermittwoch
Son 08-Apr-2001 + Palmsonntag
Don 12-Apr-2001 - Gründonnerstag
Fre 13-Apr-2001 + Karfreitag
Son 15-Apr-2001 + Ostersonntag
Mon 16-Apr-2001 + Ostermontag
Die 01-Mai-2001 + Tag der Arbeit
Don 24-Mai-2001 + Christi Himmelfahrt
Son 03-Jun-2001 + Pfingstsonntag
Mon 04-Jun-2001 + Pfingstmontag
Don 14-Jun-2001 + Fronleichnam
Mit 15-Aug-2001 + Mariä Himmelfahrt
Mit 03-Okt-2001 + Tag der deutschen Einheit
Mit 31-Okt-2001 - Reformationstag
Don 01-Nov-2001 + Allerheiligen
Mit 21-Nov-2001 - Buß- und Bettag
Son 02-Dez-2001 + 1. Advent
Son 09-Dez-2001 + 2. Advent
Son 16-Dez-2001 + 3. Advent
Son 23-Dez-2001 + 4. Advent
Mon 24-Dez-2001 # Heiligabend
Die 25-Dez-2001 + 1. Weihnachtsfeiertag
Mit 26-Dez-2001 + 2. Weihnachtsfeiertag
Mon 31-Dez-2001 # Sylvester

Holidays and weekends are marked with "+", "half" holidays are
marked with "#", and commemorative days (days which aren't legal
holidays but which have a special name) or normal weekdays are
marked with "-".


income.pl:
----------

This little program demonstrates what you can do using the Date::Pcalendar,
Date::Pcalendar::Year and Date::Pcalendar::Profiles modules, which allow you
to perform calculations which take (legal and any other you want) holidays
into account.

It expects four parameters on the command line: Your year of birth, the
number of days of (paid) vacation your employer concedes you (per year),
the number of hours per week that you work, and your brut annual income.

If called without or with a wrong number of parameters, the program prints
a usage and stops.

Otherwise, it prints a summary of your input, a list of years, followed
by the number of workdays in that year, some statistics, and your average
net wage per hour (assuming 50% taxes on income and an age of 65 for
retirement).

Note that you may have to adjust the holidays profile used in this script
before you can get any meaningful results for your location. The currently
used profile is for the federal state of Nordrhein-Westfalen in Germany.
See the manual page (and code) of the Date::Pcalendar::Profiles module
for more information.

Sample run:

:> perl income.pl 1964 30 40 100000

Year of birth      = 1964
Current year       = 2001
Year of retirement = 2029
Vacation days/year = 30
Hours per week     = 40
Brut annual income = 100000

2001 : 220
2002 : 220
2003 : 221
2004 : 225
2005 : 222
2006 : 220
2007 : 220
2008 : 223
2009 : 223
2010 : 224
2011 : 222
2012 : 221
2013 : 220
2014 : 221
2015 : 223
2016 : 222
2017 : 220
2018 : 220
2019 : 220
2020 : 224
2021 : 224
2022 : 222
2023 : 220
2024 : 221
2025 : 221
2026 : 223
2027 : 224
2028 : 220
2029 : 220

Total workdays = 6426
Average workdays per year = 221.586206896552

Total days = 10592
Average year length in days = 365.241379310345

Quotient = 0.606684290030212

Net hourly wages (assuming 50% taxes on income) = 28.2057267351385


linearcal.pl:
-------------

This program illustrates how to use the various new methods
available through the new object-oriented date and calendar modules
(Date::Pcalc::Object, Date::Pcalendar, Date::Pcalendar::Profiles).

It also shows how to temporarily change the language and date
string format, produce some output, and restore the old values.

Given two dates (start and stop date), the name of a language
and the name of one of the predefined calendar profiles, this
little subroutine prints a linear calendar, such as in the
following two examples:

:> perl linearcal.pl 1999 12 18 2000 1 9 de DE-BY

Sam 18-Dez-1999 +
Son 19-Dez-1999 + 4. Advent
Mon 20-Dez-1999 -
Die 21-Dez-1999 -
Mit 22-Dez-1999 -
Don 23-Dez-1999 -
Fre 24-Dez-1999 - Heiligabend
Sam 25-Dez-1999 + 1. Weihnachtsfeiertag
Son 26-Dez-1999 + 2. Weihnachtsfeiertag
Mon 27-Dez-1999 -
Die 28-Dez-1999 -
Mit 29-Dez-1999 -
Don 30-Dez-1999 -
Fre 31-Dez-1999 - Sylvester
Sam 01-Jan-2000 + Neujahr
Son 02-Jan-2000 +
Mon 03-Jan-2000 -
Die 04-Jan-2000 -
Mit 05-Jan-2000 -
Don 06-Jan-2000 + Dreikönigstag
Fre 07-Jan-2000 -
Sam 08-Jan-2000 +
Son 09-Jan-2000 +

:> perl linearcal.pl 1999 12 18 2000 1 9 en GB

Sat 18-Dec-1999 +
Sun 19-Dec-1999 +
Mon 20-Dec-1999 -
Tue 21-Dec-1999 -
Wed 22-Dec-1999 -
Thu 23-Dec-1999 -
Fri 24-Dec-1999 -
Sat 25-Dec-1999 +
Sun 26-Dec-1999 +
Mon 27-Dec-1999 + Christmas Day
Tue 28-Dec-1999 + Boxing Day
Wed 29-Dec-1999 -
Thu 30-Dec-1999 -
Fri 31-Dec-1999 -
Sat 01-Jan-2000 +
Sun 02-Jan-2000 +
Mon 03-Jan-2000 + New Year's Day
Tue 04-Jan-2000 -
Wed 05-Jan-2000 -
Thu 06-Jan-2000 -
Fri 07-Jan-2000 -
Sat 08-Jan-2000 +
Sun 09-Jan-2000 +

Holidays and weekends are marked with "+", "half" holidays are
marked with "#", and commemorative days (days which aren't legal
holidays but which have a special name) or normal weekdays are
marked with "-".


nth_weekday.pl:
---------------

This program is a demonstration of the function "Nth_Weekday_of_Month_Year()"
and the scanning capabilities of this package (in particular the day of week
and month, in this case).

It calculates the date of the "n"th occurrence of the given day of week
in the chosen month and year -- such as, for example, the 3rd Thursday
of a given month and year.

First build and install this package (for instructions, see the file
"INSTALL.txt" in this distribution), then change directory to the
"examples" subdirectory, and finally start this program with the
following command (example):

            % perl nth_weekday.pl 3rd Thursday April 1998

This will print:

        The 3rd Thursday in April 1998 is Thursday, April 16th 1998.

If you start this program without parameters, it will print a usage
and exit.

Note that you can enter the factor ("3rd" in the above example) either
using plain numeric digits ("1", "2", "3", "4" and "5"), or in the usual
abbreviated (English) form as "1st", "2nd", "3rd", "4th" and "5th".

You can also enter the day of week either numerically ("1" through "7"),
or as any uniquely identifying abbreviation of the name of the desired
day of week (or its name in full length) in English.

For the month you can similarly either enter the corresponding number
("1" through "12"), or any uniquely identifying abbreviation of the
month's name (or the name of the month in full length) in English.

Experiment!


time.pl:
--------

This code snippet shows you different ways of how to access the current
date and time, both as Greenwich Mean Time as well as local time.

Just run this example with "perl time.pl":

:> perl time.pl
Today_and_Now(0)          = Fri 16-Mar-2001 16:07:15
Today_and_Now(1)          = Fri 16-Mar-2001 15:07:15
Add_Delta_DHMS(984755235) = Fri 16-Mar-2001 15:07:15
gmtime(984755235)         = Fri 16-Mar-2001 15:07:15
localtime(984755235)      = Fri 16-Mar-2001 16:07:15


vacation.pl:
------------

This program shows how to calculate the number of holidays you have
to debit from your account of (paid) vacation days whenever you
apply for some vacation.

The program does not take any command-line parameters, because you
will have to adjust the holidays profile used anyway, and therefore,
the start and end date of your vacation are hard-coded, in this
example.

Just start this program with "perl vacation.pl" and it will print
the number of workdays covered by your vacation (including both
the start and end date, if applicable):

:> perl vacation.pl
23


weiberfastnacht.pl:
-------------------

This little script demonstrates how you can search for dates by name,
and how you can poll all the names associated with any particular date.

Moreover, it shows how the cache of Date::Pcalendar objects works, and
how it can be manipulated.

Please see the script's code for more details.

Sample run:

:> perl weiberfastnacht.pl
Donnerstag, den 2. März 2000 (Donnerstag Fettdonnerstag Weiberfastnacht)
Donnerstag, den 22. Februar 2001 (Donnerstag Fettdonnerstag Weiberfastnacht)
Donnerstag, den 7. Februar 2002 (Donnerstag Fettdonnerstag Weiberfastnacht)
Donnerstag, den 27. Februar 2003 (Donnerstag Fettdonnerstag Weiberfastnacht)

Donnerstag, den 19. Februar 2004 (Donnerstag Fettdonnerstag Weiberfastnacht)

(The script searches for the dates of the Thursday before Carnival in the
years 2000 through 2004, and prints the results.)


