convert to date

[CAsba]

Hi
I have this code.

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  set the itemdelimiter to "/"   
         put field "startday" & "/" &  field "startmth" &  "/" & field "startyr" into fld "announce8"
         put field "startmth" & "/" &  field "startday" &  "/" & field "startyr" into date1
         put field "startmth" & "/" &  field "startday" &  "/" & field "startyr" into date2
         convert date1 to long date

field "announce8" is "11/5/25".
The problem is that I cannot get that date into seconds, to enable further scripting.
Is it possible to convert date1 or fld "announce8 into seconds ?

[Klaus]

Hi CAsba,

since we are using Lc, it is a simple as:

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...
put fld "announce8" into tDate
convert tDate to seconds
## tDate now contains THE SECONDS!
...

is that what you are looking for?

Not sure what the english date has to look like?
MM/DD/YYYY?
In that case you need to:

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...
put field "startmth" & "/" &  field "startday" &  "/" & field "startyr" into tDate
convert tDate to seconds
## tDate now contains THE SECONDS!
...

Best

Klaus

[CAsba]

Thanks Klaus,
But it doesn't work. I have

Code: Select all

 set the itemdelimiter to "/"   
         put field "startday" & "/" &  field "startmth" &  "/" & field "startyr" into fld "announce8"
         put field "startmth" & "/" &  field "startday" &  "/" & field "startyr" into date1
         put field "startmth" & "/" &  field "startday" &  "/" & field "startyr" into date2
         put fld "announce8" into tDate
         convert tDate to seconds
         answer tDate & "27"
         

and this gives me 05/11/2025 27
It looks like fld "announce8" is not recognised as a date.

[CAsba]

Klaus,
Latest,

Code: Select all

 put field "startmth" & "/" &  field "startday" &  "/" & field "startyr" into tDate
         convert tDate to seconds
         answer tDate & "27"

still gives same answer

[CAsba]

Klaus,
Latest, I tried

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 put fld "startmth" into smth
         put fld "startday" into sday
         put fld "startyr" into syr
         
         set the itemdelimiter to "/"   
         put smth & "/" & sday & "/" & syr into tdate
         #put field "startmth" & "/" &  field "startday" &  "/" & field "startyr" into tDate
         convert tDate to seconds
         answer tDate & "27"

But still got the same answer.

[dunbarx]

Casbah.

place a line of code just before the "convert" line,

if yourVariable is a date then answer "DATE!!"

If that passes, great, if it does not, you need to examine why.

Craig

[Klaus]

CAsba,

please post what's in tDate BEFORE you try to convert it!

[CAsba]

Hi Klaus,
Sorry, I don't understand

"please post what's in tDate"

[Klaus]

I mean the content of the variable tDate right after this line:

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...
 put smth & "/" & sday & "/" & syr into tDate
...

Convert WORKS in any case, but we need to supply valid dates, that's why I want to look at that value.

[Klaus]

Juist tested with your example date:

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...
put "05/11/2025" into tDate
convert tDate to seconds
put tDate
## Gives me the correct value: 1746914400
...

So there mus be something else going wrong on your side...

[jacque]

Are there any invisible characters in the field, like carriage returns or spaces that would create an invalid date? To be sure, you could use this:

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put word 1 of fld "startday" into sday
 put word 1 of  fld "startyr" into syr

That would remove any invalid characters.

BTW, if you do not put the date into a variable, the result of a conversion is placed in the "it" variable:

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convert the date to seconds
answer it

[SparkOut]

You may also experiment with the useSystemDate property

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set the useSystemDate to true

Not that your sample code shows a date that would encounter a problem, but on Windows anything before 1970 is not recognised as a date. A disappointingly ignored problem since forever.

[CAsba]

Thanks all of you for your interest and insights.
Jacque, I used your suggestion and it works ! Thank you so much for that little wheeze.
So now I can move forward.

[Klaus]

Could you please tell us what this info (usesystemdate) actually changed for you?
Your examples here did not give any clue that you are NOT using an english date -> 05/11/2025

[SparkOut]

Heh, I don't think that was the fix, jwack said to put word 1 of each field into the relevant item of the date to be converted (which woild strip any whitespace/extraneous characters).
Which implies that the original contents of the field were not "clean" values within range/devoid of extra characters.
Lesson = check the input data.