number to time stamp function: criptic help

[hedgy]

Your help is VERY misleading.... it costed me hours...

If you say that the time stamp is "time-zone-independent number of seconds that have elapsed since 12:00 a.m., Friday, January 1, 1904, Universal Time"  you should display it as it is or *please* say that the time stamp is calculated in UTC time but displayed in local time.

In fact, if I want to convert 3600, I would expect to see 1:00 am 1/1/1904, but I see 6:00 pm 12/31/1903, because I am in Colorado....

By the way... it is wrong anyway, because there is now Daylight Savings time, which puts CO at UTC-6, not UTC-7..... Why don't you just have it display UTC time and we can all figure out where we live??

[rolfk]

Did I say something like that?

And in LabVIEW 8.6 the Date/Time Format functions have an option to select if you want to see local time or UTC. And believe me if LabVIEW would display by default UTC instead of local time, 99.999% of the users would complain in a way that NI would not be able to do other business than answering those complaints anymore.

About the time zone difference you should probably check your Windows settings. LabVIEW is simply using whatever Windows believes is the timezone it is working in. You usually select that during installation of a Windows system and there are various options such as not letting Windows adjust for DST automatically and then you might have adjusted simply the timezone or something.

Rolf Kalbermatter

Message Edited by rolfk on 08-18-2009 09:32 PM

[hedgy]

Sorry, nothing personal... "yours" was referred to NI....

I understand what you are saying.... but a slightly clearer explanation of the context help for the function wouldn't be a great effort....

I am referring to the "conversion from number (of seconds elapsed) to time stamp".  When you use the "time Stamp" function it gives you the right time....

By the way my computer displays the correct time, so the Windows setting are right.

[PhillipBrooks]

You can set the properties of a control or indicator to show timezone info in various ways. Use the %Z or % z modifiers.

Right click on the timestamp control/indicator, Select Display Format, select the Advanced editing mode.

Try these format strings:

%<%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S%z>T

Example: 2009-08-18T15:52:02-04:00:00

%<%x %X %Z>T

Example: 8/18/2009 3:52:02 PM Eastern Daylight Time

Message Edited by Phillip Brooks on 08-18-2009 03:55 PM

[rolfk]

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hedgy wrote:

By the way my computer displays the correct time, so the Windows setting are right.

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Just because it shows the right time does not mean that you have the right timezone setting. If LabVIEW thinks that you are UTC-7 instead of UTC-6 then Windows thinks that too. LabVIEW simply queries Windows for this info and also uses Windows functions to convert between local time and UTC time.

Rolf Kalbermatter