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Asked: 2026-05-26T09:11:24+00:00

On some occasions data() is converting my dates incorrectly. My date formats look like

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On some occasions data() is converting my dates incorrectly.

My date formats look like so:
Fri Oct 25 15:00:00 EDT 2011

The date string comes from an external source, so I’m unable to change the format.

// output incorrect - Fri, 28 Oct 2011 15:00:00 -0400
date("r", strtotime("Fri Oct 25 15:00:00 EDT 2011"))

// output correct - Fri, 21 Oct 2011 15:00:00 -0400
date("r", strtotime("Fri Oct 21 15:00:00 EDT 2011"))

I can’t figure out why just changing the day makes it fail to convert.

My end goal is to create a DateTime object but it suffers from the same problem.

// output - Fri Oct 28 19:00:00 EDT 2011
DateTime("Fri Oct 22 19:00:00 EDT 2011")
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Oct 25/2011 is a tuesday. Strtotime is interpreting your date string as “what’s the next friday AFTER Oct 25th”, and is returning (what it thinks) is the correct answer: October 28th.

    So, the GIGO rule applies. You’re feeding in garbage, and wondering why you’re getting garbage out.

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