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RW-UT

the functions READ-TIME-STRING and WRITE-TIME-STRING are for reading and writing lisp universal time as strings

universal times stored as strings using READ-TIME-STRING and WRITE-TIME-STRING have the following advantages over normal universal times stored as integers:

  1. They are human readable and thus less prone to bugs

  2. They are easier to use when interacting with external databases or other programs that expect times dates encoded as strings

  3. They are ISO-8601 compliant (by default)

    CL-USER> (defvar now (get-universal-time))
NOW

CL-USER> now
3425557791

CL-USER> (use-package :rw-ut)
T

CL-USER> (rw-ut:write-time-string now)
"2008/07/20 15:49:51"

CL-USER> (rw-ut:read-time-string *)
3425557791

CL-USER> (eql * now)
T

CL-USER> (rw-ut:write-time-string now "MM-DD-YY")
"07-20-08"

CL-USER> (rw-ut:read-time-string * "MM-DD-YY")
3425500800

CL-USER> (rw-ut:write-time-string * "YYYY/MM/DD)
"2008/07/20"

PATTERNS

READ-TIME-STRING and WRITE-TIME-STRING are designed to work with "patterns". patterns are strings that control how READ-TIME-STRING and WRITE-TIME-STRING read and write universal time as strings.

Patterns look like the psuedocode described in the the ISO-8601-2004_E document in section 3.4.2 "Characters used in place of digits or signs" (dont worry, it's also the same psuedocode used in the Wikipedia article on ISO-8601 ;-).

The #\? character introduces a "breakpoint". When writing (with WRITE-TIME-STRING), everything after a breakpoint will be omitted if there is nothing non-boring after it. when reading (with READ-TIME-STRING), everything after the breakpoint can be omitted and will be assumed to be boring values ("boring values" means 1 for month and day and 0 for everything else)

READ-TIME-STRING and WRITE-TIME-STRING currently understand the following patterns:

YYYY -- year, 4 digits
YY   -- year, 2 digits
MM   -- month, 2 digits
M    -- month, 1-2 digits
DD   -- day, 2 digits
D    -- day, 1-2 digits
hh   -- hour, 2 digits
h    -- hour, 1-2 digits
mm   -- minute, 2 digits
m    -- minute, 1-2 digits
ss   -- second, 2 digits
s    -- second, 1-2 digits

The #\\ char is the escape char, use it to read or write things that look like patterns but aren't

BREAK POINTS (the #\?)

Anything after a #\? can be "omitted", since READ-TIME-STRING and WRITE-TIME-STRING are lazy and don't like to deal with minumum values if they don't have to (boring balues being 1 for dates and months, 0 for everything else)

RW-UT> (write-time-string (read-time-string "2008") "YYYY-MM-DD")
"2008-01-01"

 RW-UT> (write-time-string (read-time-string "2008") "YYYY-MM?-DD")
"2008-01"

RW-UT> (write-time-string (read-time-string "2008") "YYYY?-MM?-DD")
"2008"

THE DEFAULT PATTERN

The default pattern for both READ-TIME-STRING and WRITE-TIME-STRING is

YYYY?/MM?/DD? hh?:mm?:ss

TOLERANCE

READ-TIME-STRING will accept two kinds of junk:

  1. Different literal characters that don't effect the length of the string. For example, the default pattern can read strings that look like this:

    YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss

    but it can also read strings that look like this:

    YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss

    Note: numberic characters in the wrong spot will probably screw things up because it looks like part of the date

  2. there can be junk at the end of the string. so the default pattern can read string that look like this:

    YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss

    but it can also read strings that look like this:

    YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss.0000Z

API

  • READ-TIME-STRING (string &optional (pattern "YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss"))

Function. Reads STRING according to the pattern string PATTERN and returns a Universal Time intiger.

  • WRITE-TIME-STRING (ut &optional (pattern "YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss"))

Function. Writes the universal time integer UT as a string according to the pattern string PATTERN