Date additon / subtraction - just the basics

How do you manipulate dates?

I take a string x = “2/4/2007”.to_date

then I want to add 5 days to it returning “2/9/2007” as a date

I could just pull it apart and add the days to it, but if it should
switch the month then it becomes a problem.

I saw things like 1.week.ago but that deals with the current date, and
x.1.week.ago returns an error.

Thanks for any help.

Try making it a Time object instead of a Date:

t = Time.mktime(2007,2,4)
=> Sun Feb 04 00:00:00 CST 2007

t.ago(2.days)
=> Fri Feb 02 00:00:00 CST 2007

5.days.since(t)
=> Fri Feb 09 00:00:00 CST 2007

You can call to_date on the Time object if you actually need a Date
object
finally.

ed

Alex T. wrote:

How do you manipulate dates?

I take a string x = “2/4/2007”.to_date

then I want to add 5 days to it returning “2/9/2007” as a date

I could just pull it apart and add the days to it, but if it should
switch the month then it becomes a problem.

I saw things like 1.week.ago but that deals with the current date, and
x.1.week.ago returns an error.

Thanks for any help.

x = x.advance(:days => 5)

James B. wrote:
should be:

x = x.to_time.advance(:days => 5)

check this :

x = “2/4/2007”.to_time
y = 1.week.ago(x)
z = 2.days.since(x)

Charly

James B. wrote:

James B. wrote:
should be:

x = x.to_time.advance(:days => 5)

and to return a date object

x = x.to_time.advance(:days => 5).to_date

You guys rock! Thanks for the help!