Fun with Time#to_s and locale

ruby-talk
1

Anyone? Anyone? Buehler? Buehler?

Dan

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-----Original Message-----
From: Berger, Daniel [mailto:Daniel.Berger@qwest.com]
Sent: Tuesday, May 23, 2006 11:52 AM
To: ruby-talk ML
Subject: Fun with Time#to_s and locale

Hi all,

I was futzing around with Time objects and locale. Searching
the archives I didn't really see anything that let me get
Time objects back in the locale string that I want.

Did I reinvent the wheel?

require 'Win32API'

class Time
   GetDateFormat = Win32API.new('kernel32', 'GetDateFormat', 'LLPPPL',
'I')

   def to_s(lang=0)
      buffer = 0.chr * 100
      systime = [year, mon, wday, day, hour, min, sec].pack('S*')
      picture = 'dddd MMM dd yyyy' # Or change 'dddd' to 'ddd'

      if GetDateFormat.call(lang, 0, systime, picture, buffer,
buffer.size) == 0
         raise get_last_error
      end

      buffer = buffer[ /^[^\0]*/ ]

      # Splice the hours, minutes and seconds in
      buffer.split.insert(2, "#{hour}:#{min}:#{sec}
#{zone}").join(' ')
   end
end

if $0 == __FILE__
   LANG_FRENCH = 0x0c
   LANG_GERMAN = 0x07
   LANG_SPANISH = 0x0a

   p Time.now.to_s # "Tuesday May 11:48:51 MDT 23 2006"
   p Time.now.to_s(LANG_GERMAN) # "Dienstag Mai 11:48:51
MDT 23 2006"
   p Time.now.to_s(LANG_SPANISH) # "martes may 11:48:51 MDT 23 2006"
   p Time.now.to_s(LANG_FRENCH) # "mardi mai 11:48:51 MDT 23 2006"
end

I've no idea how to do this on non-Windows systems. Is there
an easier way?