Date is different when converted - php

Question

hello i am working with the Date() function i am getting a time that is current and time that is coming from a database to compare the times, but the dates are different:
date_default_timezone_set("America/Los_Angeles"); // set time zone to LA
$date = date("m-d-Y h:i:s"); // current time
$current_time = strtotime($date); // current time in seconds
$get_time = 1357487529; //linux time from the server
$difference = $current_time - $get_time; //seconds that have pass already
$get_date = date("m-d-Y h:i:s", $get_time); // convert the linux time to current time and date
$exploded_get_date = explode(" ", $get_date); //divide the get date into 2 parts by space 0 = date 1 = time
$exploded_current_date = explode(" ", $date); //divide the current date into 2 parts by space 0 = date 1 = time
the results i get are:
01-Sun-2013 07:52:09 //get date
06-01-2013 07:56:25 //current date
1357487785 // current time
1357487529 // get time
256 //difference
why is it saying i have month 1 in the get date, but in the current date is actually month 6 and also the day it says it is Sunday 6, when is Saturday 1? how can i fix this?

Answer 1

m-d-Y is NOT a valid format for parsing. Only you Americans think it's sensible to put the elements in an unsorted order...
Anyway, the point is, what does 06-01-2013 mean? Is it June 1st, or January 6th?
For consistency's sake, the computer assumes January 6th (d-m-Y format).
I would strongly recommend using the Y-m-d H:i:s format, as this is inherently sortable as string due to being fully big-endian.
EDIT: It should be noted that you can just use time() to get the current timestamp.

Answer 2

Your code is VERY redundant:
$date = date("m-d-Y h:i:s"); // current time
$current_time = strtotime($date); // current time in seconds
can be replaced with a simple
$current_time = time();
and
$get_date = date("m-d-Y h:i:s", $get_time); // convert the linux time to current time and date
$exploded_get_date = explode(" ", $get_date); //divide the get date into 2 parts by space 0 = date 1 = time
$exploded_current_date = explode(" ", $date);
could just be
$exploded_date = date('m-d-y', $get_time);
$exploded_time = date('h:i:s', $get_time);
You are wasting a considerable amount of CPU cycles on useless/repetitive and ultimately redundant operations.
And in the greater picture, your error is that PHP's normal and easiest analysed/parsed date/time strings are in yyyy-mm-dd format. You're building mm-dd-yyyy, which is pretty much entirely scrambled. PHP cannot guess properly when you feed it uncertain formats. That means strtotime() is going to screw up and give you incorrect results.