Epoch - The creation of the world

epoch localtime gmtime time DateTime

In case you were wondering what is the epoch that sometime we talk about, it is the "start of the time" - as understood by your Linux/Unix-based computer.

Also know as the "creation of the world".

As you will see, it happened to fall on a Thursday.

examples/epoch.pl

use strict;
use warnings;
use 5.010;
use DateTime;

say scalar gmtime(0);

say scalar localtime(0);

my $dt = DateTime->from_epoch( epoch => 0 );
say $dt;

my $time = time();
say $time;
say scalar localtime($time);


In the output first you'll see the epoch in London (or more precisely in Greenwich) then the same in any location that is in the GMT+2 timezone.

Then the same, formatted using the DateTime class.

Finally the value returned by the time function which is the current time in seconds since the epoch and the same in a more readable format. (Yes, you see it well, I wrote this article on a Sunday at 7 am.)

Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Thu Jan  1 02:00:00 1970
1970-01-01T00:00:00

1572757196
Sun Nov  3 07:01:41 2019

Author

Gabor Szabo (szabgab) Gabor Szabo