Whereas David <[log in to unmask]> wrote: If there are only resources to add one new system defined variable for the next century, make sure it's for the full century and year. I suggest: HPCCYY which I think reads slightly better than HPYYYY. Having the century in a separate variable HPCENTURY variable would be nice, but not necessary if we had HPCCYY. If there is to be a fundamental shift from elementary variables to more complex variables, David's basic suggestion gets to the heart of it. Implement variables that are obviously useful by themselves: four digit year, hh:mm:ss.mmm as a number for both calculation and comparison, and so forth. Then, if one needs fully qualified time (CCYYMMDDHHMMSSMMM), concatenate it; conversely, if one needs only the hour or only the minutes, trim that out. But just as important as utility is consistency. >---------- >From: Wirt Atmar[SMTP:[log in to unmask]] >Sent: Friday, November 22, 1996 10:53 AM >To: [log in to unmask] >Subject: Re: [HP3000-L] Proposal for new HPCENTURY CI variable > >Jeff Kell writes: > >>But on the "micro-management" issue... I'd much prefer ONE variable >with >>all clock information you could substring from as opposed to the >growing >>number of possible individual date/time/etc variables. > >That would be my strong vote, too. The string would contain >CCYYMMDDHHMMSSMMM (where the last three MMM's are milliseconds). However >I would be prone to name it something other than HPYYMMDDHHMMSSMMM. >Perhaps just HPTIME. > >Wirt Atmar >