Date::Calendar

I recently had the opportunity to work with Date::Calendar, a Perl module that provides users with calendar objects for different holiday schemes. Its motto is "There is more than one way to do it - this is just one of them!" which sets the tone for its easy-to-use, yet highly effective functionality.

At its core, Date::Calendar acts as a caching proxy class for Date::Calendar::Year objects. However, in contrast to Date::Calendar::Year methods, Date::Calendar methods allow for calculations spanning arbitrary numbers of years without a loss of efficiency. Essentially, this means that using Date::Calendar eliminates the need to worry about calculations crossing year boundaries.

It is important to note that Date::Calendar and Date::Calendar::Year can only handle years between 1583 and 2299.

Here is a look at some of the functions available through the module:

- Use Date::Calendar::Profiles to get profiles for a specific location
- Get a list of year numbers and year objects with cache_keys and cache_vals
- Clear, add, and delete cache with cache_clr, cache_add, and cache_del functions
- Convert dates to indexes with date2index
- Get labels for a specified date or month using the labels function
- Search for specific dates with the search function
- Retrieve a hash reference of tags for a specified date or month
- Calculate the number of workdays between two dates using the delta_workdays function
- Increase or decrease a date by a specified number of workdays
- Check whether a specified date is full, half, or workday with the is_full, is_half, and is_work functions.

All in all, I found Date::Calendar to be a highly useful and reliable module for anyone in need of a solid calendar object solution. Its features are easy to use, and the ability to handle arbitrary year spans with efficiency is a much-appreciated bonus.