How to show yesterdays date in this format?

Question

I know there is a lot of info on the neton how to show yesterdays date but I am unable to get any of them to work in this format

How do you show yesterdays date if todays date is in this format date('F jS, Y') ?

July 27th, 2009 should show July 26th, 2009

//Does not work
$yesterday = date('F jS, Y', mktime(0, 0, 0, date("F") , date("j") - 1, date("Y")));
echo $yesterday;

Answer 1

Use the very awesome strtotime:

$today = 'July 27th, 2009';
$yesterday = date('F jS, Y', strtotime('yesterday', strtotime($today)));
print $yesterday; // July 26th, 2009

Answer 2

easier: $yesterday = date('F jS, Y', time()-86400);