Is the DateFormat read only?

[Graham Samuel]

Jacque

Right as usual. I had forgotten about the internet date, if I ever knew. I suppose somewhere there is a little essay about all this but if so it is buried in the LC documentation.

The only souci with this format is that it gives the month in alpha, presumably according to the nationality of the OS. But it’s easy to get the numeric month in other ways. Still, it is just a little bit fiddly to create a full UTC date of the format:

YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ssTZD

Works OK now, just slightly more lines of code than I would have guessed.

Thanks (again).

Graham

> On 29 Oct 2020, at 18:15, J. Landman Gay via use-livecode <use-livecode at lists.runrev.com> wrote:
> 
> You can get the time zone, or at least the zone offset, by using "the internet date".
> 
> --
> Jacqueline Landman Gay | jacque at hyperactivesw.com
> HyperActive Software | http://www.hyperactivesw.com
> On October 29, 2020 8:21:46 AM Graham Samuel via use-livecode <use-livecode at lists.runrev.com> wrote:
> 
>> I understand it, but the Dictionary is misleading and in one case actually wrong: when it says the ’time’ form gives the seconds - it doesn’t. You need to use the ‘long time’, at least so it seems to me. I have submitted a bug report.
>> 
>> I also thought that I could use the ToUniversalTime function, but that assumes you already know the time zone. Although LC has a Time Zone library, I haven’t found any documentation explaining how an app can find out which Time Zone it’s actually in. In fact my app doesn’t care that much, so will stick to UTC.
>> 
>> The documentation around all this needs a bit of tidying up, IMHO.
>> 
>> Graham
>> 
>>> On 29 Oct 2020, at 12:07, Tore Nilsen via use-livecode <use-livecode at lists.runrev.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> If you only use a date and  convert it, dateItems will assume the time to be midnight on that particular date.
>>> 
>>> Tore
>>> 
>>>> 29. okt. 2020 kl. 12:04 skrev Graham Samuel via use-livecode <use-livecode at lists.runrev.com>:
>>>> 
>>>> Just FYI, I think the dictionary is wrong or misleading in respect of what the dateItems does. If you script this in the LC Message Box:
>>>> 
>>>> put the date into t1
>>>> convert t1 to dateItems
>>>> put t1
>>>> 
>>>> You get, e.g.
>>>> 2020,10,29,0,0,0,5
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> but if you script
>>>> 
>>>> put the english time into t1
>>>> convert t1 to dateItems
>>>> put t1
>>>> 
>>>> You get e.g.
>>>> 2020,10,29,11,40,0,5
>>>> 
>>>> i.e if you specify the date, you only get the date; but if you specify the time, you get the date thrown in. I could not deduce this from the Dictionary, but maybe I am just poor at reading what it says.
>>>> 
>>>> Graham
>>>> 
>>>>> On 29 Oct 2020, at 09:29, Graham Samuel via use-livecode <use-livecode at lists.runrev.com> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> Thanks Tore - I had forgotten the existence of dateItems. That of course will do the trick. BTW I was trying to create dates in standard UTC format, and now I can.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Graham
>>>>> 
>>>>>> On 28 Oct 2020, at 23:18, Tore Nilsen via use-livecode <use-livecode at lists.runrev.com> wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> You can convert any given date to dateItems. Then you can use dateItems to present the date in any format you like. A date converted to dateItems will give you the following list of items:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> the year
>>>>>> the month number
>>>>>> the day of the month
>>>>>> the hour in 24-hour time
>>>>>> the minute
>>>>>> the second
>>>>>> the numeric day of the week where Sunday is day 1, Monday is day 2, and so forth
>>>>>> All according to the Dictionary.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> To be sure that any valid date format is recognized as a date when you read in the date you will like to convert, it is best to ask for the system date or set the useSystemDate to true, as this will make all valid date formats convert to dateItems.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Best regards
>>>>>> Tore Nilsen
>>>>>>> 28. okt. 2020 kl. 22:58 skrev Graham Samuel via use-livecode <use-livecode at lists.runrev.com>:
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> A quick test seems to show that the DateFormat can’t be changed by a ‘set’ command.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> How then can I force a date to be in a given format? I’m really thinking of the difference between US and European dates, i.e
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> d/m/y versus m/d/y
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Obviously for some types of use, an LC program should be able to force the format for consistency’s sake, regardless of where in the world it’s being run.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Can it be done?
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Graham
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