strtotime -unexpected results

[Donk]

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I was trying to get a list of monthends over the previous year using strtotime ("last month").

So I tried this:

<?php
$montharray=array("Jan","Feb","Mar","Apr","May","Jun","Jul","Aug","Sep","Oct","Nov","Dec");
foreach ($montharray as $key=>$value){
$showdate=date("Y-m-d H:i:s", strtotime("last ".$value));
echo $showdate."<br>";
}
?>

I got some surprising results! I could have accepted the first day month or the last day of the previous month, but the results I got were a day before the end of the month.

2005-12-30 00:00:00
2006-01-30 00:00:00
2006-02-27 00:00:00
2006-03-30 00:00:00
2006-04-29 00:00:00
2006-05-30 00:00:00
2006-06-29 00:00:00
2006-07-30 00:00:00
2006-08-30 00:00:00
2006-09-29 00:00:00
2006-10-30 00:00:00
2006-11-29 00:00:00

The most difficult to understand is from september onwards! PHP regards last september as 29/09/2006?????

[Tom]

Isn't it just one day short on each month?

[drivetowin]

The problem is because strtotime treats every month as being 30 days.

It is a known bug in strtotime.

You are also misinterpreting what it means by last - it does not mean the last day of the month, it means previous - i.e last monday = monday last week.

[Donk]

Hi keith

I understand the concept of last month.
But "last Sep" gives 2006-09-29 00:00:00 I would say that is this or even next september I would have expected 2005-09-29 to be consistent.


Bob

[drivetowin]

Hi Bob

That's true - looks like it's a function with more than a few quirks!!