How can I convert from a formatted time string (e.g. 3/17/98) to a Unix time stamp (i.e. num. seconds from Jan 1, 1970 00:00:00)?
I can find many methods of converting into a date string in the Ruby "date" library, but none to go back the other way. While this won't be a problem in later builds, my proof of concept application is using a SQLite database which does not support the "DATE" type format.