tonyaim83 wrote:

Hi I'm using Date time library for the first time so no idea how best make use of it. My primary target is to check if the first timestamp and second timestamp entered by the user are in a span of one hour. Format of input string is as follows YYYYDDMM-HH:MM:SS(20071015-17:47:10) Now if the second string is also in the an hour span it should return true otherwise false. I m thinking of doing this like std::string to_iso_string(date d1) ptime p1(d1, time_duration("17:21:23")); std::string to_iso_string(date d2) ptime p2(d2, time_duration("17:22:23"));

ptime p3=p2-p1; if (p3>1) { return false; } I could also find a function which has a separator T std::string to_iso_extended_string(ptime); How can i make use of this function as in my case the separtor of date- time is "-" Or a better way to perform the same task.

I suggest you use the facet i/o. The program below prints "less than one hour". The time_input_facet defines the parsing format: time_input_facet* timefacet = new time_input_facet("%Y%m%d-%H:%M:%S"); Rest of the program should be pretty obvious. ***************************** #include "boost/date_time.hpp" #include <iostream> using namespace boost::posix_time; ptime parse_time(const std::string& s) { ptime t; //not-a-date-time try { std::stringstream ss(s.c_str()); time_input_facet* timefacet = new time_input_facet("%Y%m%d-%H:%M:%S"); ss.imbue(std::locale(std::locale::classic(), timefacet)); ss.exceptions(std::ios_base::failbit); // turn on exceptions ss >> t; } catch(std::exception& e) { std::cout << "Incorrect date format entered" << std::endl; std::cout << e.what() << std::endl; } return t; } int main() { hours one_hour(1); ptime t1 = parse_time("20071015-17:47:10"); ptime t2 = parse_time("20071015-17:47:45"); if (!(t1.is_not_a_date_time() || t2.is_not_a_date_time())) { if (t2-t1 < one_hour) { std::cout << "less than one hour" << std::endl; } } }