Im seeing the same thing on FreeBSD 5 with PHP5 rc2.

code: 

<?php
$strtime = strtotime('now');
printf('
     Now:  %11s  %s
Str time:  %11s  %s

'
, time()
, date('d M Y @ H:i:s ')
, $strtime
, date('d M Y @ H:i:s ', $strtime)
);
?>

Expected:


     Now:   1084875653  18 May 2004 @ 11:20:53
Str time:   1084875653  18 May 2004 @ 11:20:53


Actual:


     Now:   1084875653  18 May 2004 @ 11:20:53
Str time:   1084834800  18 May 2004 @ 00:00:00

This is actually expected behavior because we follow the GNU guidelines here, but I agree it's a weird thing to do. If nobody objects I'll make "now" be really now during the rewrite of the strtotime() rewrite.

Hi derick,

    Yes that is strange, What about adding an optional parameter to the function to set toggle between real now and gnu now?

    Something like:

        int strtotime ( string time [, int now] [, bool gnu = false])

Just thought that i would point out that in PHP 4 now is real now and not GNU now so form a BC point of view i think now should be real now.

Just thought that i would point out that in PHP 4 now is real now and not GNU now so form a BC point of view i think now should be real now.

That's feasible for the rewrite, but for the current parser.

So how would one, for example, use strtotime() to get the current time + 10 mins?

The functionality is maintained in RC3. 
I needs the realtime for logging of process. My workaround is to do this:
$str=date('d F Y h:i:s A');
$timestamp = strtotime("$str");

Will this bug be fixed before the final php5 release?

A lot of code will need rewriting before php5 is released if "now" is going to changed.

Wouldn't it be better to have

today = Monday 12th of July 2004 12:00:00 AM
now   = Monday 12th of July 2004 08:49:23 PM

I've been using strtotime() to calculate relative shifts in time, ie.

$real_now = strtotime("2004-07-15 00:16:35");
$exactly_one_day_ago = strtotime("-1 day", $real_now);
echo date('Y-m-d H:i:s', $exactly_one_day_ago)

Expecting "2004-07-14 00:16:35"
but getting: "2004-07-14 00:00:00"

I'm sure there's a way around this, but I'm really not that bright... so I had to jump back to php4 for the time being.

So I also think that the "now" parameter should be real now, not GNU "now".

Until this behaviour is fixed so that now() means 'real now' and not 'GNU now' here is a workaround that works in both PHP 4 and PHP 5:

$real_now = date('Y-m-d H:i:s');
$dt1 = strtotime("$real_now -1 day");
$dt2 = date('Y-m-d H:i:s', $dt1);

This bug has been fixed in CVS.

Snapshots of the sources are packaged every three hours; this change
will be in the next snapshot. You can grab the snapshot at
http://snaps.php.net/.
 
Thank you for the report, and for helping us make PHP better.