NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #30/NN_1992_30.iso/spool/comp/sys/mac/hypercar/4596

Internet Message Format | 1992-12-16 | 1.8 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!stanford.edu!apple!jkc
From: [e-mail] (John Kevin Calhoun)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hypercard
Subject: Re: BEWARE: HyperCard and 7.1
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 16 Dec 92 17:52:32 GMT
References: <[e-mail]>
Organization: Apple Computer Inc, Cupertino, CA
Lines: 34


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail]
(Rick Eames) writes:
>If you have changed your date format using the new Date/Time CDEV you WILL
>end up changing HyperCard's "the long date" format.  For example, if you
>tell the CDEV that you don't want the day showing, the long date will NOT
>give you "Thursday" or whatever day it is.

Thanks for pointing this out, Rick.  It's not documented in the Script
Language Guide, but it's true:  HyperCard uses the date formats specified
by System Software, not fixed formats as the Script Language Guide implies.
There's a good reason why it does so:  compatibility with localized versions
of System Software.

In general, you should never rely on the format of the date returned by the
date function.  In particular, you should never attempt to parse a date
within a script, assuming, for instance, that word 1 of the long date is
the day of the week.  If you need to know the day of the week, use the
convert command to convert the long date to dateItems format, and then
look at item 7 of the resulting string.  This will give you the day of
the week in numerical form.

  convert the long date to dateItems
  put item 7 of it into dayOfWeek

In general, if you want to do calculations on dates within scripts,
use the convert command to convert the date to one of the two fixed
formats for dates and times, seconds or dateItems, do what you need
to do in that format, and then convert back to whatever format you
want to display.

Kevin Calhoun
[e-mail]