Date Package for TCL

Date::SetFormat DateFormat

SetFormat must be called before any other date routines are used. Setformat may be called again to change the format that you wish to operate in.

The DateFormat may be any combination of characters that include

• YYYY - four digit year
• YY - two digit year
• MM - two digit month
• MMM - three character month
• DD - two digit day
• DDD - day of week short format (2.10 newer) - DD still required
• DDDD - day of week long format (2.10 newer) - DD still requried
• T24 - 24 hour time without seconds
• T24S - 24 hour time with seconds
• T12 - 12 hour time without seconds
• T12S - 12 hour time with seconds
• m - AM/PM indicator
• any other text

Date::SetFormat "MMM, DD/YYYY T12m"

Date::GetFormat

Return the string used to set the current date format. This is usefull to save the current date format, temporarily set a new date format and finally set the format back to the original.

Date::Compare Date1 Date2

Compare the date and time according to the DateFormat returning

Date1 < Date2 return -1
Date1 = Date2 return 0
Date1 > Date2 return 1

Date::Adjust Date Adjustment

Return a new Date that is advanced or retreated by the adjustment specified. Adjustments can be any combination of years, months, weeks days, hours, minutes or seconds with an optional modifier of "ago" to indicate in the past.

The adjustment may also be the full day of the week (Thursday) to return the same time on the specified day of the week that Date falls in. Sunday is the first day of the week.

Date::Today ?relative?

Return the current date from the operating system with the time specified by relative.

Date::Now

Return the current date and time from the operating system

Date::WeekDay Date ?S|L|N?

Return the current day of the week in either short, long or numeric form. The default is short.

Date::Day Date ?S|L?

Return the current day of the month in either short (no leading zero) or long (always two digits). The default is short.

Date::Month Date ?S|L|N?

Return the current month of the year in either short, long or numeric form. The default is short.

Date::Year Date ?L|S?

Return the year in either long (4 digit), or short (2 digit) format. The default is long.

Date::Hour Date ?S|L?

Return the hour in either long (2 digit), or short (no leading zero) format. The default is short.

Date::Minute Date ?S|L?

Return the minute in either long (2 digit), or short (no leading zero) format. The default is short.

Date::Second Date ?S|L?

Return the second in either long (2 digit), or short (no leading zero) format. The default is short.

Date::Convert Date Format

Convert the date specified in the format set with SetFormat to the format specified in Format. See SetFormat for the options of Format.

Date::Apart Date1 Date2

Return a string specifying the number of days, hours, minutes and seconds from Date1 to Date2. This information is in a format ready for the Adjust routine.

Date::Seconds DateApart

Return the number of seconds equivilent to the contents of the string DateApart. DateAppart must be in the format returned by the Apart routine. This is included so that you can set timers using the TCL after command based on date differences.

Date::Parse DateString

Interpret the format free date DateString and return a string date of the format specified with SetFormat.

Date::Test ?detail?

Test the most critical date routines. Returns 0 if no errors encountered, otherwise return 1. If "detail" is included, display the results of the tests as they are made.

Revision History

Version 2.16 - Jan 4, 2001

• Added the routines Hour, Minute and Second.

Version 2.15 - Jun 5, 2000

• The date handling is slightly different under TCL 8.3.x. Small changes were required in the Date::Adjust routine to accomodate TCL 8.3

Version 2.14 - Mar 13, 2000

• The last bug fix introduced a new bug. The Date::Parse routine returned an empty string when there was no time provided. This has now been fixed.

Version 2.13 - Mar 11, 2000

• Fixed a small bug that would cause Date::Parse to return an empty string if the time was not absent or exactly ##:##:##

Version 2.12 - Jan 25, 2000

• The time format required the leading zero for hours with only 1 digit. The leading zero is no longer required.
• The date format required that the number of spaces in the date format match exactly the number and position of spaces in the date/time string. This caused problems for those date that replaced the leading digit location in times with a space, resulting an two spaced between the date and the time. The number of spaces is now variable, but must be present if specified in the Date::SetFormat.
• The Date component of the Date/Time string was mandatory. It is now optional. All date/times without a date in them are assumed to be "today".

Version 2.11 - Oct 29, 1999

• Somehow, my versions got out of sync. I had 2 different versions of 2.10 and niether of them worked correctly under TCL 8.2.1. Fixed this and created version 2.11
• To simplify testing of DatePkg for new versions of TCL I have included a new Test routine to test the most crucial routines.

Version 2.10 - July 18, 1999

• The clock routines around daylight savings time are more consistent in version 8.1. The Date::Adjust routine now does not correct for this, which caused incorrect results under TCL 8.1. Version 2.9 will be the last version for TCL 8.0
• Added the ability to specify the DDD (short day of week) and DDDD (long day of week) in the Date::SetFormat routine. The numeric day of the month is still require in order to figure out the exact date (there are multiple mondays in a month), so these new elements are really only used on date output.

Version 2.9 - July 5, 1999

• The GetFormat routine caused a side effect with the Convert routine which resulted in scripts aborting under some conditions. This has been fixed.

Version 2.8 - May 9, 1999

• Added the GetFormat routine.

Version 2.7 - April 20, 1999

• Fixed a bug caused all of the date parsing routines to fail for days of the month ending in zero.

Version 2.6 - April 14, 1999

• Fixed a bug that caused erroneous parsing of the date when there was no identifiable separation between numeric only elements. This occurs when the year or numeric month or day are adjacent to each other without a separator character as is the case with the date format of YYYYMMDD.

Version 2.5 - March 23, 1999.

• First public release.