How to reduce a date

[zozzen]

Hi,

I would like to reduce the result of date () but it doesn't seem to work.

The way I do is like this:
$day = date('M dS'); // show "Feb 24th"

In order to get, for example, "Feb 20th", then I tried:

echo date('M dS') - 4;

or
echo $day - 4;

but it can't show "Feb 20th".

Does anyone know how to do it? Thanks a lot!

[cameraman]

date() converts a timestamp to human formats. The optional second parameter is the timestamp to use, if not provided then it uses the system time. The easiest date fiddling function to use is strtotime() [php.net].

Since strtotime produces timestamps, you can combine the two, using strtotime to provide the timestamp:
date("M dS",strtotime('-4 days'));

[zozzen]

Thanks a lot, cameraman!

[zozzen]

And btw, i actually wanted to find out the "last saturday" in my program and i almost used a very inefficient way to do it (like switch or if...elseif). I know how to do it correctly! Very useful!

date('M dS',strtotime("last Saturday"));

[cameraman]

Cool!
Yep, strtotime() is practically magic.