Get file date and time

[masternull]

Hi, I wuld like to know if anyone could tell me if there is commands that get the date and time of a file.

I made a procedure that does it, but I don't find it very elegant. What I do is use the system command to do a DIR, then I use a bunch of match and tokenize to find the line that contains the file I am querying, then in that line I find the date and time and re-format them so that mel can understand them better.

I looked around to find a command that does it but I didn't find anything.

Thanks for your help.

[macaronikazoo]

i don't think its possible through mel without using the method you describe.

altho, u could always write a shell script that returns the date and time, but then you'd need more than just the mel script to get it to work...

[masternull]

I managed to do it in Mel. The problem is I had to write a 100+ line mel script to compare 2 dates. I think it's complex scripting for such a trivial thing in other languages like vb script or jscript.

[joojaa]

ummm? sound like you took a detour!

[masternull]

There are some things that gets complex when you take a string and tokenize it into a int array. The 12/24 hour problem occurs. 12 pm must return smaller then 1pm, but comparing 12 with 1... 12 is bigger. So I need to change 12 for 0. I need to take the AM/PM and convert them into 0/1 int., I need to take the date+hour array and re-order it from bigger to smaller, year, month, day, am/pm, hour, minutes.... Etc.

Complicated for nothing if you ask me.. Sometime I wish mel was an object oriented language...

Anyway. It seems the way I did it is a good way to do it in mel. And since it's done and working now... i'll let it go.

Have a great day

[macaronikazoo]

yeah, i understand such a simple function is such a complete pain in the ass. and unfortunately your script is platform dependant too.

BTW whether mel is OO or not, the fact would still remain that it doesn't have a get current date, or a get file date function. so even if it was OO, you'd still be writing 100+ lines of code.

[joojaa]

Still 100 lines is too much! Say you toeknize a string and get the hors be of index 3 mins 4 and am/pm 5

okay here goes note that it can be expanded quite easily to include the dates. so comparing a am/pm time in without date is one line of code as you can se (ok 4 if yo are nitpicking)

Also the localedata can be read form a file wich can desine the indes orders makein it more portable!

global proc int TimeInMins(string $time[]){
return ($time[3]+($time[5]=="pm")1260+$time[4]);
}

{
string $time1[]={"28","06","2004","10","47","pm"};
string $time2[]={"28","06","2004","10","47","am"};
print ((TimeInMins($time1)>TimeInMins($time2))+"n");
print ((TimeInMins($time1)<TimeInMins($time2))+"n");
}

Ofcourse getting that tokenstirng form a sytem command in my locale is just (note my locale doesent actualy need am/pm cheking).

string $buffer[];
$numTokens = `tokenize "11.06.2004  13:45            95

[failure]

If you just need to sort the files by date let the shell command do it for you.

[masternull]

thanks for this reply. I see that I still have some tricks to learn to save some lines of codes.

For example, instead of this: print ((TimeInMins($time1)>TimeInMins($time2))+"n");

I would do
if ((TimeInMins($time1)>TimeInMins($time2)){
return 1;
}