Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!amdcad!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!DRCVAX.ARPA!graham
From: graham@DRCVAX.ARPA
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: RE: Printing file age from DCL
Message-ID: <8802152352.AA08946@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 11 Feb 88 18:03:00 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: <graham@drcvax.arpa>
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 22

Many have asked this question before.  As far as I know, there isn't an 
easy, or difficult way to add or subtract times and dates from DCL.

The VAX stores dates and times in a quadword format.  Basically, the 
quadword is the number of 100 millisecond chunks since midnight, 17 
November 1858.  (Don't ask!)

It would be simplicity itself to write a brief FORTRAN program to subtract 
dates so you could have file age.  You need the use of three system 
services/RTL routines:

1. SYS$BINTIM to translate the date strings into quadword format
2. LIB$SUBX to subtract the two quadwords
3. SYS$ASCTIM to convert the resulting quadword into a string

Remember that delta times use negative values.


hope this helps a little,

Dan Graham
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