The TimeDate distribution replaces earlier GetDate distribution, which was only a date parser. The date parser contained in this distribution is far superior to the yacc based parser, and a *lot* fatser. The parser contained here will only parse absolute dates, if you want a date parser that can parse relative dates then take a look at the Time modules by David Muir on CPAN. The file Local.pm.new which is included in this distribution is a patched version of Time::Local which comes with perl. It fixes two problems - It determines the zone offset based on now rather than epoch - It fixes a problem with looping forever when a year > 1900 is passed in