title: Difference between two PHP times as years, months and days for PHP version 5.2
body: <h1>Forward:</h1>
  
  <p>I've scanned through the existing questions/answers on this matter. This is not a duplicitous question; I cannot find a working solution from the accepted answers.</p>
  
  <p>The main questions/answers I've reviewed can be found here:
  <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/676824/how-to-calculate-the-difference-between-two-dates-using-php">How to calculate the difference between two dates using PHP?</a></p>
  
  <h1>What I need:</h1>
  
  <p>A calucalation of the difference between two dates expressed as years, months and days <strong>that works with PHP version: 5.2</strong>.</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;?php
  $current_date = date('d-M-Y');
  $future_date = '2012-11-01';
  ?&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <h1>What I've tried:</h1>
  
  <ol>
  <li>Most answers I find online don't seem to be exact in that they don't
  factor in leap years.</li>
  <li><a href="https://stackoverflow.com/a/3923228/835950">This</a> highly rated answer won't work because DateTime->diff() is
  php 5.3+.</li>
  <li><p><a href="https://stackoverflow.com/a/676828/835950">This</a> accepted answer (i.e. the second block of code
  aimed at PHP 5.2) results in the following being parsed:</p>
  
  <p>Array ( [y] => 25 [m] => 11 [d] => 7 [h] => 3 [i] => 15 [s] => 19 [invert] => 0 [days] => 9473 ) Array ( [y] => 25 [m] => 11 [d] => 7 [h] => 3 [i] => 15 [s] => 19 [invert] => 1 [days] => 9473 )</p></li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>I can't tell if I've incorrectly applied the code or it's simply a case of me not knowing how to manipulate the array.</p>