Appendix D: Miscellaneous Datatypes

The datatypes used within mof are relatively straightforward, with the exception of datetime and string . This appendix describes these.

The datetime Datatype

This datatype can be used to represent either a specific time or an interval between specific times. Both of these representations consist of a string of exactly 25 characters . A specific time is expressed in the form:

 yyyymmddhhnnss.uuuuuuPxxx 

and an interval is expressed in the form:

 ddddddddhhnnss.uuuuuu:000 

where the fields are as shown in Table D.1. All fields must be zero- padded on the left to preserve their length and unused fields must be replaced with the appropriate number of asterisks .

Table D.1: The "datetime" Fields

Field	Contents
yyyy	4-digit year
mm	2-digit month (01 to 12)
dd	2-digit day (01 to 31)
hh	2-digit hour (00 to 23): 24 hour clock
nn	2-digit minute (00 to 59)
ss	2-digit second (00 to 59)
uuuuuu	6-digit representation of microseconds
Pxxx	is a representation of the number of hours between the local time and UTC (Universal Co-ordinated Time) in the format xxx where xxx is a number of minutes (points west of Greenwich being negative, those east positive). This field is always set to ':000' in the representation of a time interval: it is the colon which distinguishes an interval from a specific time.
dddddddd	is a number of days

For example, 5 minutes, 23.243424 seconds after midday on my birthday, 14th November 2004, in Ottawa (EST), would be represented as

 20041114120523.243424-300 

Similarly, an interval of 10 days, 17 hours, 4 minutes, and 17.0887 seconds would be represented as

 00000010170417.088700:000