Golang : Calculate elapsed years or months since a date

This is additional tutorial to our previous tutorial on how to calculate elasped run time. We will learn how to calculate the elapsed time in years, month and day.

NOTE : it is important to note that if you're trying this out in play.golang.org, please note that the time started on :

 2009-11-10 23:00:00

and

Here it is :

 package main

 import (
 "fmt"
 "time"
 )

 func main() {
 format := "Jan 2, 2006" // just a format. not taken into calculation

 date := "Oct 29, 1978"

 start, _ := time.Parse(format, date)

 end := time.Since(start)

 years := end / time.Hour / 24 / 365

 fmt.Printf("%d years passed since %s\n", years, date)

 months := years * 12

 fmt.Printf("%d months passed since %s\n", months, date)

 // calculating days can be tricky - need to factor in leap years and timezones(daylight saving)
 }

output :

36 years passed since Oct 29, 1978

432 months passed since Oct 29, 1978

and if the code is executed on http://play.golang.org/p/SDs6NkInrL

31 years passed since Oct 29, 1978

372 months passed since Oct 29, 1978