Miscellaneous Date/Time Utility Functions

PV-WAVE Foundation > User Guide > Working with Date/Time Data > Miscellaneous Date/Time Utility Functions

PV‑WAVE contains several utilities for generating and obtaining information about date/time variables. For more information about each of these functions, see the PV‑WAVE Reference. These include:

TODAY

DAY_NAME

DAY_OF_WEEK

MONTH_NAME

DAY_OF_YEAR

DT_PRINT

TODAY Function

This function returns a date/time variable containing the current date and time. The form of the function is:

result = TODAY

Example

dttoday = TODAY()

PRINT, dttoday

; PV-WAVE prints: { 1992 3 26 7 11 14.0000 87487.299 0}

DAY_NAME Function

This function returns a string variable or array of string variables containing the name(s) of the day(s) of the week of the date(s) in the input variable. The form of the function is:

result = DAY_NAME(dt_var)

Example

Assume that you have a date/time variable, date, for April 13, 1992. To find out which day of the week this date is, enter:

day = DAY_NAME(date)

PRINT, day

; PV-WAVE prints: Monday

The day names are accessed from the !Day_Names system variable.

DAY_OF_WEEK Function

This function returns the day(s) of the week expressed as an integer(s) for a date/time variable. Day 0 is Sunday, 1 is Monday, etc. The syntax of the function is:

result = DAY_OF_WEEK(dt_var)

Example

Assume that you have a date/time variable, date, for April 13, 1992. To find out which day of the week this date is, enter:

day = DAY_OF_WEEK(date)

PRINT, day

; PV-WAVE prints: 1

A value of 1 indicates it is a Monday.

MONTH_NAME Function

This function returns a string or array of strings containing the month name of dt_var, where dt_var is a date/time variable. The function has the form:

result = MONTH_NAME(dt_var)

Example

Create variable that contains date/time data for today's date.

dttoday = TODAY()

; PV-WAVE prints: { 1992 4 1 6 12 57.0000 87493.259 0}

m = MONTH_NAME(dttoday)

PRINT, m

; PV-WAVE prints: April

The month names are accessed from the system variable !Month_Names.

DAY_OF_YEAR Function

This function returns an integer or array of integers representing the day number of the year for each date/time value. Day numbers fall in a range between 1 and 365 (or 366 for a leap year). The syntax of the function is:

result = DAY_OF_YEAR(dt_var)

Example

; Create a date/time variable.

dttoday = TODAY()

daynumber = DAY_OF_YEAR(dttoday)

PRINT, daynumber

; PV-WAVE prints: 106

DT_PRINT Procedure

This procedure takes the values in a date/time variable and prints these values in a readable manner. The procedure has the form:

DT_PRINT, dt_var

dttoday= TODAY()

DT_PRINT, dttoday

; PV-WAVE prints: 4/2/1992 7:7:51.0000