Doc #81319 [Ver->Csd]: Unfortunate example on time() man page

Edit report at https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=81319&edit=1

 ID:                 81319
 Updated by:         [email protected]
 Reported by:        will dot duncan dot nn at gmail dot com
 Summary:            Unfortunate example on time() man page
-Status:             Verified
+Status:             Closed
 Type:               Documentation Problem
 Package:            Date/time related
 PHP Version:        Irrelevant
 Block user comment: N
 Private report:     N

 New Comment:

Automatic comment on behalf of derickr
Revision: https://github.com/php/doc-en/commit/532a253c4385070310880d4ab10f77aec3c56029
Log: Fixed bug #81319: Unfortunate example on time() man page


Previous Comments:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[2021-08-04 13:39:09] [email protected]

> Some example that doesn't try to do date arithmetic by hand...

Nice!  Maybe you want to submit a pull request
(<https://github.com/php/doc-en/pulls>)?

------------------------------------------------------------------------
[2021-08-02 22:42:09] a at b dot c dot de

Some example that doesn't try to do date arithmetic by hand...

echo "The date is now ", date('F jS Y', time()), ". It has been for ", time() - strtotime('today'), " seconds so far, and will remain so for another ", strtotime('tomorrow') - time(), " seconds. It has been ", time(), " seconds since midnight January 1st 1970 GMT.";

------------------------------------------------------------------------
[2021-08-02 13:37:27] [email protected]

Yeah, right, the example #1 on that page is bad.  Using gmdate()
instead of date() would be an improvement, but still there would
be issues with leap seconds (which UTC supports).  And I agree
that such date/time calculations are generally problematic, if not
outright bad, so the user note makes sense.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
[2021-08-02 12:59:31] antonino dot spampinato86 at gmail dot com

It means if your local time is different from UTC (UTC+00:00/GMT+0000) you have to adjust the time zone to see the date in UTC, directly with the date function and without changing the timezone. Without using native php functions, including gmdate, simple arithmetic is not recommended. time() currently returns an integer decimal but if you go too far or too far back you may also see a float as it is not covered by the operating system's 32 BIT range. https://www.php.net/manual/en/datetime.gettimestamp.php

This is an example I hope it helps you


date_default_timezone_set("Europe/Helsinki");
$time = time(); //GMT+0000

function conversion_offset($time) {
$a = date('Y-m-d H:i:s Z', $time);
$len = strpos($a, ':');
$datetime = substr($a, 0, ($len + (6)));
$b = strtotime($datetime, $time);
$offset = (int) substr($a, ($len + (7)));

if($time > 0 && $offset <= 0)
$result = $time - ($offset);
elseif($time > 0 && $offset >= 0)
$result = $time + $offset;
elseif($time < 0 && $offset >= 0)
$result = $time + $offset;
else
$result = $time - ($offset);
return $result;
}
$time = strtotime('-1980-04-03 00:00:00');
$a = date('Y-m-d H:i:s Z', $time);
$b = gmdate('Y-m-d H:i:s Z', $time);
$date = date('Y-m-d H:i:s Z', conversion_offset($time));
var_dump($time, 'gmdate: ' . $b, 'conversion_offset: ' . $date, 'Local time: ' . $a);

------------------------------------------------------------------------
[2021-08-01 14:42:42] will dot duncan dot nn at gmail dot com

Description:
------------
https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.time.php#118876

The user is implying that UTC is affected by daylight saving, which is obviously not true https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordinated_Universal_Time

The user is implying that "not every day has 24 hours," however, for UTC, which is used for the `time()` function, this is never the case. Under "Mechanism" on the Wikipedia article, you can easily find the following quote: "Each day contains 24 hours and each hour contains 60 minutes."

I am reporting this as this is the #2 most upvoted note for this page. It is incredibly misleading and inaccurate. Notes like this one can greatly damage new developers browsing the documentation, especially when said note appears on the top.

------------------------------------------------------------------------


The remainder of the comments for this report are too long. To view
the rest of the comments, please view the bug report online at

    https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=81319


--
Edit this bug report at https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=81319&edit=1