CARTER@MITBATES.BITNET (Tony Carter - MIT Bates Linac) (10/20/87)
>I'm writing a fortran program that, among other things, accepts a date >as part of the command line. (ie: STUFF/DATE=12-dec-1987:12:00:00.00) >Getting the date and doing stuff with it is not a problem, however, it >would be nice if the /DATE qualifier would understand "TODAY+12" or "YESTERDAY" >"TOMORROW+12-", etc... What performs these conversions for DCL commands ? >(I understand everything must eventually end up as a quadword for $BINTIM >and $ASCTIM...) Are there routines (maybe that someone has written) to do >this ? You do not say how you are getting the date from the command line. If you are using LIB$GET_FOREIGN then you're on your own. But if you are using the CLI routines (ie CLI$GET_VALUE, CLI$PRESENT, etc...) and declare the qualifier as having type $DATETIME then DCL will interpret the date for you. For instance, using your example of "TODAY+12", DCL will decide what "today" is, add 12, and then when you perform a CLI$GET_VALUE on that qualifier it will return a string in the form of dd-mmm-yyyy. (Note that the double quotes around the date are necessary when there is a +/- sign present) See manual 7B "Command Definition" and 8A "Utility Routines" for more info.