NAME

DateTime::Format::PGN - a Perl module for parsing and formatting date fields in chess game databases in PGN format

VERSION

version 0.05

SYNOPSIS

   use DateTime::Format::PGN;

   my $f = DateTime::Format::PGN->new();
   my $dt = $f->parse_datetime( '2004.04.23' );

   # 2004.04.23
   print $f->format_datetime( $dt );
   
   # return a DateTime::Incomplete object:
   my $fi = DateTime::Format::PGN->new( { use_incomplete => 1} );
   my $dti = $fi->parse_datetime( '2004.??.??' );
   
   # 2004.??.??
   print $fi->format_datetime( $dti );

METHODS

new(%options)

Options are Boolean use_incomplete (default 0) and Boolean fix_errors (default 0).

my $f = DateTime::Format::PGN->new( { fix_errors => 1, use_incomplete => 1 } );

PGN allows for incomplete dates while DateTime does not. All missing date values in DateTime default to 1. So PGN ????.??.?? becomes 0001.01.01 with DateTime. If use_incomplete => 1, a DateTime::Incomplete object is used instead where missing values are undef.

I observed a lot of mistaken date formats in PGN databases downloaded from the internet. If fix_errors => 1, an attempt is made to parse the date anyway.

parse_datetime($string)

Returns a DateTime object or a DateTime::Incomplete object if option use_incomplete => 1. Since the first recorded chess game was played 1485, years with a leading 0 are handled as errors.

format_datetime($datetime)

Given a DateTime object, this methods returns a PGN date string. If the date is incomplete, use a DateTime::Incomplete object (the use_incomplete option does not affect the formatting here).

Source

PGN spec by Steven J. Edwards.

See also

• Chess::PGN::Parse
• DateTime::Incomplete
• http://datetime.perl.org/

AUTHOR

Ingram Braun [email protected]

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

This software is copyright (c) 2016 by Ingram Braun.

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.