Datetime

This keyword declares a DateTime variable.

Syntax

Local    Datetime NAME
Local    Datetime NAME(DIMENSIONS)
Variable Datetime NAME(DIMENSIONS)
Value    Datetime NAME(DIMENSIONS)
Const    Datetime NAME(DIMENSIONS)
  • NAME is the name of the variable declared
  • LENGTH is an integer value between 0 and 20.
  • DIMENSIONS can be:
    • a single numeric value DIM (meaning that we have an array with an index range from 0 to DIM-1)
    • a range of numeric values INDEX1..INDEX2 (the index varies between INDEX1 and INDEX2)
    • several indexes or index ranges separated by a comma (for multiple dimension arrays, up to 4 dimensions are possible)

Several variable declarations can be done on the same line, separated by a comma.

Local declarations create the variables in the current local variable class that is not seen by nested or calling sub-programs. The Call / Subprog, func / Funprog insulate the local variables, as well as the calls of method by fmet.

Const, Variable and Value declarations declare the arguments sent by a Call, func, or fmet. With these syntaxes, the dimensions and the index ranges can be omitted as soon as the parenthesis are present (the dimension and index ranges are defined by the calling program).

Example

# Direct declarations
Local Datetime NOW : # Local datetime variable
Local Datetime EVENTS_TIME(1..60), CURRENT_DATETILE : # An array of 60 datetime values and another variable
# A sub-program sending date times and returning a result
Funprog SEND_TIMING(MYDATETIME)
Variable Datetime MYDATETIME(,) : # A 2 dimensions matrix of datetime values is sent as reference
...
End SEND_STATUS
# A sub-program storing dates
Subprog STORE_VALUES(EVENT_DATETIME)
Value Datetime EVENT_DATETIME(1..5) : # An array of 5 elements is sent (a copy is done when passing the arguments)
...
End

Comments

There is still a Global declaration variable that exists for variables that have to be seen in the scope of a process execution, but its use is strongly discouraged.

Datetime properties are declared with the ADATIM data type in the data dictionary.

Every table has CREDATTIM and UPDDATTIM system columns. These columns are automatically added when the table is created and they are automatically filled by the framework when records are created and updated. Therefore, DateTime declarations are rarely used.

Implicit data type conversion

There are no implicit type conversions for datetime. All type conversions must be explicitly specified in the script.

See also

Datetime, datetime$, gdatetime$GlobalLocalVariableValueConstTinyintShortintDateIntegerFloatDoubleDecimalCharClbfileBlbfileUuidentInstance