CHAPTER 9 – DATE HANDLING

PHP has a range of functions that handle date and time. Some of these func- tions work with a so-called UNIX timestamp, which is the number of seconds since January 1, 1970 at 00:00:00 GMT, the beginning of the UNIX epoch. Because PHP only handles unsigned 32-bit integers and most operating sys- tems don't support negative timestamps, the range in which most of the PHP date functions operate is January 1, 1970 to January 19, 2038. The PEAR::Date package handles dates outside this range and also in a platform-independent way.