Converts a time as returned by the time function to a 9-element list with the time analyzed for the local time zone. If EXPR is omitted,localtime uses the current time (as returned bytime).
Typically used as follows:
# 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8my ($sec,$min,$hour,$mday,$mon,$year,$wday,$yday,$isdst) = localtime(time);All list elements are numeric and come straight out of the Cstruct tm.$sec,$min, and$hour are the seconds, minutes, and hours of the specified time.
$mday is the day of the month in the range1..31 (i.e. 1-based).$mon is the month in the range0..11 (i.e. 0-based), with 0 indicating January and 11 indicating December. This makes it easy to get a month name from a list:
my @abbr = qw(Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec);print "$abbr[$mon] $mday";# $mon=9, $mday=18 gives "Oct 18"$year contains the number of years since 1900 (e.g.129 for 2029).
$wday is the day of the week, with 0 indicating Sunday and 3 indicating Wednesday.$yday is the day of the year, in the range0..364 (or0..365 in leap years.)
$isdst is true if the specified time occurs when Daylight Saving Time is in effect, false otherwise.
To get a human-readable date/time string, use"strftime" in POSIX:
use POSIX qw(strftime);my @now = localtime;my $now_string = strftime "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S", @now;# e.g. "2025-11-29 15:19:02"To get just the year, you can use either"strftime" in POSIX:
use POSIX qw(strftime);# full year:my $year = strftime "%Y", localtime;# just the last two digits of the year:my $ar = strftime "%y", localtime;... or manual arithmetic:
my ($sec,$min,$hour,$mday,$mon,$year,$wday,$yday,$isdst) = localtime;# full year:$year += 1900;# just the last two digits of the year:my $ar = sprintf("%02d", $year % 100);In scalar context,localtime returns thectime(3) value:
my $now_string = localtime; # e.g., "Thu Oct 13 04:54:34 1994"This scalar value is always in English, and isnot locale-dependent. To get similar but locale-dependent date strings, try for example:
use POSIX qw(strftime);my $now_string = strftime "%a %b %e %H:%M:%S %Y", localtime;# or for GMT formatted appropriately for your locale:my $now_string = strftime "%a %b %e %H:%M:%S %Y", gmtime;$now_string will be formatted according to the current LC_TIME locale the program or thread is running in. Seeperllocale for how to set up and change that locale. Note that%a and%b, the short forms of the day of the week and the month of the year, may not necessarily be three characters wide.
TheTime::gmtime andTime::localtime modules provide a convenient, by-name access mechanism to thegmtime andlocaltime functions, respectively.
For a comprehensive date and time representation look at theDateTime module on CPAN.
For GMT instead of local time use thegmtime builtin.
See also theTime::Local module (for converting seconds, minutes, hours, and such back to the integer value returned bytime), and thePOSIX module'smktime function.
Portability issues:"localtime" in perlport.
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