Clock Command

Ricci,

I have found clock scan to be rather picky.

I use convert_date (HCI provided) to do what you want.

In your case:

set dt [convert_date ts $dt yd 8]

should do the trick and return 01092007.

To find out more about convert_date go into hcitcl and do a help convert_date.

Jim Kosloskey

While as Jim said, the clock command is picky, the power of this command as compared to the outdated convert_date command makes it worthwhile.  All Tcl commands if not used correctly are picky  🙂

The clock scan command expects the date and time to be in a list (space separated).  For example “20070117 011323” would scan as would just the date alone (the default of 12:00:00 AM would be used.

Using the regsub command it is simple to make an HL7 date scanable

regsub — {(d{8})(d*)} $dt {1 2} dt

The formatting capabilities plus the ability to do date math with the clock command makes it much more powerful than the convert_date command.

For example

assume dt = 20070116131522

regsub — {(d{8})(d*)} $dt {1 2} dt

set yesterday [clock format [clock scan yesterday -base

         [clock scan $dt]] -format %Y%m%d%H%M%S]

echo $yesterday

 => 20070115131522

Try that with convert_date  😉

The good thing about convert_date is that it handles dates prior to 1903.  Clock scan doesn’t.

Mike

Why will this time not work with clock scan

20080816005200

You may need to insert a ‘T’ between date and time if you want it that granular.

hcitcl>clock scan 20080816T005200

1218862320

hcitcl>clock format 1218862320

Sat Aug 16 00:52:00 EDT 2008

hcitcl>

Hope this helps

It works fine if I change the hour to 01 intead of 00

The clock scan command expects a list of one element (YYYYMMDD) or two elements (YYYYMMDD HHMMSS)

A simple solution:

set dt 20080816T005200

regsub — {(d{8})(.*$)} $dt {1 2} dt

It will scan now

Please read my response in this post, this will give you some more insites to the problem:

https://usspvlclovertch2.infor.com/viewtopic.php?t=2613&highlight=” class=”bbcode_url”>https://usspvlclovertch2.infor.com/viewtopic.php?t=2613&highlight=

Adding the T does not work if your original time does not have seconds like a lot of time inputs in messages.  You will need to make sure that you add a 00 for seconds or use one of the regsub expressions in the attached post.

Charlie,

Can you explain why this command did not work for the hour of 00 but works for every other time.

I can only say it is an anomaly with the clock command.  Given the power of this command, it is well worth the effort to learn the small nuances you encounter.

I am sure if you post the question on comp.lang.tcl you will get more answers than you need  😀

Rob,

The problem might be that after clock scan removes the leading zeroes in the time (remember Tcl is picky about numbers with leading zeroes) it doesn’t recognize what’s left as a date/time anymore.  If you colon delimit your time, then clock scan works fine as far back as 1903.  For example: ‘clock scan “20080829 00:01″‘ = 1219986060.

Rob,

  This is actually a bug that is not fixed till version 8.5.  This sourceforge link talks about it:

http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1090413&group_id=10894&atid=110894” class=”bbcode_url”>http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1090413&group_id=10894&atid=110894

  Basicly, without the colons in the time it treats the value as an integer chopping off the leading zero’s.  

  This link has some regsub commands you can use:

https://usspvlclovertch2.infor.com/viewtopic.php?t=2613&highlight=” class=”bbcode_url”>https://usspvlclovertch2.infor.com/viewtopic.php?t=2613&highlight=