Re: Best way to convert "system timestamp format"

[Simon Coulter <shc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 20/02/2010, at 10:47 AM, Paul Jackson wrote:

> What is the current recommended method of converting a "system
> timestamp" date (8 bytes) into a regular RPG native timestamp field?
> I've seen a bunch of date and time API's/MI instructions out there so
> was curious as to the best method to use.  I will be doing this
> conversion many hundreds of thousands of times and so would be looking
> for the quickest method (assuming there is a big difference between
> them).
>
> I've used QWCCVTDT before, should I just stick with that?

That's the easiest method but is likely slower than the MI version.  
You would be trading ease for speed. The only way to know for sure is  
to perform empirical tests but I suspect the call overhead to the API  
will be measurable over "many hundreds of thousands" of iterations.

If you use the MI built-in _CVTD then you'll need to build appropriate  
DDAT structures for the input and output dates. Not difficult but lots  
of sub-fields to set and offsets to calculate correctly.

Search the archives for additional information on DDAT structures.

Regards,
Simon Coulter.
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