civil

Creates a date object denoting the given calendar date.

In this class, BCE years are counted astronomically. Thus, the year before the year 1 is the year zero, and the year preceding the year zero is the year -1. The month and the day of month should be a negative or a positive number (as a relative month/day from the end of year/month when negative). They should not be zero.

The last argument should be a Julian day number which denotes the day of calendar reform. Date::ITALY (2299161=1582-10-15), Date::ENGLAND (2361222=1752-09-14), Date::GREGORIAN (the proleptic Gregorian calendar) and Date::JULIAN (the proleptic Julian calendar) can be specified as a day of calendar reform.

Date.new(2001)            #=> #<Date: 2001-01-01 ...>
Date.new(2001,2,3)        #=> #<Date: 2001-02-03 ...>
Date.new(2001,2,-1)       #=> #<Date: 2001-02-28 ...>

See also jd.