Pascal - Date & Time

Most of the software you write needs implementing some form of date functions returning current date and time. Dates are so much part of everyday life that it becomes easy to work with them without thinking. Pascal also provides powerful tools for date arithmetic that makes manipulating dates easy. However, the actual name and workings of these functions are different for different compilers.

Getting the Current Date & Time:

Pascal's TimeToString function gives you the current time in a colon(: ) delimited form. The following example shows how to get the current time:

program TimeDemo;
uses sysutils;
begin
   writeln ('Current time : ',TimeToStr(Time));
end.

When the above code was compiled and executed, it produced following result:

Current time : 18:33:08

The Date function returns the current date in TDateTime format. The TDateTime is a double value, which needs some decoding and formatting. The following program demonstrates how to use it in your program to display the current date:

Program DateDemo;
uses sysutils;
var
   YY,MM,DD : Word;
begin
   writeln ('Date : ',Date);
   DeCodeDate (Date,YY,MM,DD);
   writeln (format ('Today is (DD/MM/YY): %d/%d/%d ',[dd,mm,yy]));
 end.

When the above code was compiled and executed, it produced following result:

Date: 4.111300000000000E+004
Today is (DD/MM/YY):23/7/2012

The Now function returns the current date and time:

Program DatenTimeDemo;
uses sysutils;
begin
   writeln ('Date and Time at the time of writing : ',DateTimeToStr(Now));
end.

When the above code was compiled and executed, it produced following result:

Date and Time at the time of writing : 23/7/2012 18:51:

Free Pascal provides a simple time stamp structure named TTimeStamp, which has the following format:

type TTimeStamp = record
  Time: Integer;
  Date: Integer;
end;

Various Date & Time Functions:

Free Pascal provides the following date and time functions:

The following example illustrates the use of some of the above functions:

Program DatenTimeDemo;
uses sysutils;
var
year, month, day, hr, min, sec, ms: Word;
begin
   writeln ('Date and Time at the time of writing : ',DateTimeToStr(Now));
   writeln('Today is ',LongDayNames[DayOfWeek(Date)]);
   writeln;
   writeln('Details of Date: ');
   DecodeDate(Date,year,month,day);
   writeln (Format ('Day: %d',[day]));
   writeln (Format ('Month: %d',[month]));
   writeln (Format ('Year: %d',[year]));
   writeln;
   writeln('Details of Time: ');
   DecodeTime(Time,hr, min, sec, ms);
   writeln (format('Hour: %d:',[hr]));
   writeln (format('Minutes: %d:',[min]));
   writeln (format('Seconds: %d:',[sec]));
   writeln (format('Milliseconds: %d:',[hr]));
end.

When the above code was compiled and executed, it produced following result:

Date and Time at the time of writing : 7/24/2012 8:26:
Today is Tuesday
Details of Date:
Day:24
Month:7
Year: 2012
Details of Time:
Hour: 8
Minutes: 26
Seconds: 21
Milliseconds: 8