First, it is important to note that time (in Erlang) is always an
integer based on a platform-specific starting date, an Epoch,
(with a platform-specific minimum and maximum value). Keeping that
into consideration, and using various Erlang built-in functions,
we can get the number of seconds of a given date, and time. For instance, to get the seconds corresponding to the date, and time:
"Wed Apr 21 13:01:01-0500 2004" you could simply:
All of Erlangs date functions are in compliance with the Gregorian
calendar, with its Epoch at year 0. So, the seconds value may
differ from what we would expect from most UNIX languages (which
would record their Epoch as January 1, 1970). So these languages
would report a value of 1082570461, rather than 63249771661.
To prove this, let's get the gregorian seconds for 12:00:00 AM on
January 1, 1970:
