LOTUSSCRIPT LANGUAGE


Dates/Time
LotusScript does not have a date/time data type as such: you can’t declare a variable with date/time values. However, LotusScript does recognize dates internally and provides a set of functions for entering, retrieving, and manipulating date/time values, which are stored as eight-byte (double) floating-point values. The integer part represents a serial day counted from 1/1/100 AD, and the fractional part represents the time as a fraction of a day, measured from midnight. The range of allowable values for a date is -657434 (January 1, 100 AD) to 2958465 (December 31, 9999). 0 is December 30, 1899.

You use Variant variables to hold and manipulate date/time values, which you can produce by calling one or another of the following functions:

Function/StatementPurpose
CDat FunctionConverts a numeric or string expression to a date/time Variant value
Date FunctionReturns the system date
Date StatementSets the system date
DateNumber FunctionConverts year, month, and day, to a date value
DateValue FunctionConverts a string to a date value
Day FunctionReturns the day of the month (1-31) from a date/time expression
FileDateTime FunctionReturns the date and time a file was most recently saved
Format FunctionFormats a number, a date/time value, or a string
Hour FunctionReturns the hour of the day (0-24) of a date/time expression
IsDate FunctionReturns True (-1) if a Variant date/time value, otherwise False (0)
Minute FunctionReturns the minute of the hour (0-59) from a date/time expression
Month FunctionReturns the month of the year (1-12) from a date/time expression
Now FunctionReturns the current system date and time
Second FunctionReturns the current second of the minute (0-59) from a date/time expression
Time FunctionReturns the system time. The date part of the value is set to 0 or December 30, 1899.
Time StatementSets the system date
TimeNumber FunctionConverts hours, minutes, and seconds to a fractional date/time value
Timer FunctionReturns the time elapsed since midnight in seconds
TimeValue FunctionConverts a string to a fractional date/time value
Today FunctionReturns the system date (equivalent to the Date function)
WeekDay FunctionReturns the day of the week (1-7) from a date/time expression
Year FunctionReturns the year as a four-digit integer from a date/time expression
Note Variant variables containing date/time values may be added to produce another Variant variable containing a date/time value. However subtracting one Variant variable containing a date/time value from another will produce a Variant of type Double. You must use the Cdat function to convert the variable back to a date/time value.

You can use the DataType or TypeName functions to determine if a Variant variable holds a date or date/time value. If it does, DataType returns a value of 7, and TypeName returns DATE.

The following examples illustrate the various ways you can derive date and date/time values, how you can assign them to Variant variables, and some of the operations you can then perform on them, such as calculating a time span or determining the day of the week on which a given date will fall.

Suppose that today is October 26, 1994, the time is 7:49:23 AM, and you declare the following variables:

Dim theInstantV As Variant
Dim theDateV As Variant
Dim theDateValV As Variant
Dim myDate As String

This example gets the current date and time by calling the function Now and then assigns the result to a Variant variable, the InstantV:


This example prints the integers corresponding to the day of the month and the hour of the day:
This example assigns the current date to the Variant variable, theDateV:
This example converts the value of the current date to a value of type Double:
This example gets the integer representation of the current year, month, and day; increments the month and day values and assigns the results to some Integer variables; passes them to DateNumber, which calculates the date on the basis of those values and returns it, assigning it to the Variant variable theDateV:
This example assigns a string that can be interpreted as a date to a String variable, myDate$; then converts it to a date/time value and performs a calculation on it (subtract a day), and returns the resulting date:
This example displays the date in a particular print format:
This example converts the date/time value of the current date to a value of type Double:
This example converts the date/time value of a particular date to a value of type Double by passing it as a String to DateValue and then passing the result to CDbl, which converts it to a value of type Double:
This example calculates the number of days between two dates:
Note If the dates are subtracted from each other without first converting to Double, the result will be a Variant of type Double.

This example determines which day of the week a particular day falls on — Sunday is 1.


If the integer part of a value is 0, the value is interpreted as a Time value.
If the fractional part of a value is 0, the value is interpreted as a Date value.
See Also