AW: Difference between 2 time values expressed in hh:mm:ss format -- RPG400-L

Jeff and others,

Not sure if my first answer went lost, but using SQL was my first suggestion
(even with example), but it seems nobody did care about that :(

Using SQL for timestamps to calculate the difference in hours, minutes,
seconds, I'd suggest the following:

D DSTimeDiff DS
D TimeDiff 9S 0
D Hours 5S 0 overlay(Timediff)
D Minutes 2S 0 overlay(Timediff: *Next)
D Seconds 2S 0 overlay(TimeDiff: *Next)

/Free
Exec SQL Set TimeDiff = (Days(:Timestamp1) - Days(Timestamp2)) * 3600 +
(Time(:Timestamp1) - Time(:TimeStamp2));

Mit freundlichen Grüßen / Best regards

Birgitta Hauser

"Shoot for the moon, even if you miss, you'll land among the stars." (Les
Brown)
"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance." (Derek Bok)
"What is worse than training your staff and losing them? Not training them
and keeping them!"

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] Im
Auftrag von Vern Hamberg
Gesendet: Tuesday, 25. May 2010 05:48
An: RPG programming on the IBM i / System i
Betreff: Re: Difference between 2 time values expressed in hh:mm:ss format

There is date/time/timestamp arithmetic in SQL - you can subtract
timestamps, for example. The result is a "duration", which has a weird =
to me = layout for timestamps, it is a 20,6 packed number - 1st 4 digits
are number of years between the timestamps, next 2 the # of months,
etc., down to microseconds. I've never seen this as a "simple-to-use"
thing in SQL, but one could make a DS with a zoned subfield and
appropriate "component" subfields for year, month, day, etc. - unless
one can extract all that using the various date built-ins.

I mention this option, admitting that I've never quite conquered it.

For example, the result of TIME('11:02:26') - '00:32:56' is 102930 (a
duration of 10 hours, 29 minutes, and 30 seconds).
For example, the result of DATE('3/15/2000') - '12/31/1999' is 215 (or,
a duration of 0 years, 2 months, and 15 days). (Date duration is 8,0 packed)

A timestamp duration would be formatted as YYYYMMDDHHMMSS.mmmmmm

HTH
Vern

Jeff Young wrote:

Scott,
Given that concern, what would you recommend as the best method to get a

duration value of the difference between two timestamps in HH:MM:SS format?

Thanks,

Jeff Young
Sr. Programmer Analyst
IBM -e(logo) server Certified Systems Exper - iSeries Technical Solutions

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IBM Certified Specialist- e(logo) server i5Series Technical Solutions

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Implementer V5R3

________________________________
From: Scott Klement <rpg400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: RPG programming on the IBM i / System i <rpg400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Mon, May 24, 2010 1:40:09 PM
Subject: Re: Difference between 2 time values expressed in hh:mm:ss format

Hi Brian,

When you give this answer again (and you will -- I've given it at least
twice a month for the past 4 years) please add a disclaimer.

The disclaimer is that the TIME data type was not intended to store a
DURATION. It was meant to identify a particular moment of the day, not
to express an amount of time that has passed.

Consequently, it does not work well for this sort of thing. For
example, if there's 15 hours and 20 minutes have elapsed between a
start/end timestamp, and you format the time in USA format, it'll say
"3:20 PM" It identifies a time of the day, not a number of hours that
elapsed.

Likewise, if you try to exceed 24 hours, you'll get an error. For
example, you can't make it say 26 hrs, 5 minutes. Why not? Because it
identifies a time of day, and there's no 26 O'Clock.

So while the technique you propose does have value in certain
circumstances, you should understand that you're doing something that
wasn't really intended -- and therefore won't always do what you expect.

On 5/24/2010 9:04 AM, BMay@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

Use the %Diff Bif to get the difference in seconds. Then add the seconds
to a time field set for midnight (00:00:00).