Description:
Instead of adopting the date$ variable from QBasic, Liberty BASIC uses a function instead. This approach gives some additional flexibility. Unless otherwise indicated, the function returns today's date in the format specified. Some forms of DATE$() return a number, and others return a string as indicated below. See also TIME$( ), Date and Time Functions
Usage:
'This form of date$() produces this format
print date$() ' Nov 30, 1999 returns string
print date$("mm/dd/yyyy") ' 11/30/1999 returns string
print date$("mm/dd/yy") ' 11/30/99 returns string
print date$("yyyy/mm/dd") ' 1999/11/30 returns string - can be used for sorting
print date$("days") ' 36127 returns number - days since Jan 1, 1901
print date$("4/1/2002") ' 36980 returns number - days since Jan 1, 1901 for given date
print date$(36980) ' 04/01/2002 returns string - mm/dd/yyyy string returned
'when given days since Jan 1, 1901
You can assign a variable to the result:
d$ = date$( )
NOTE: All the above forms return a string except for date$("days"), and date$("4/1/02")
Using the date$("4/1/02") function:
This function returns the number of days since Jan 1, 1901 for the given date. Any of the following formats are acceptable. Please notice that if the first two digits of the year are omitted, 20xx is assumed.
'some examples
print date$("4/1/02") 'this assumes 4/1/2002
print date$("1/1/1901")
print date$("April 1, 2002")
print date$("Apr 1, 2002")
Here is a small program that demonstrates the last two implementations of the date$ function. It determines the number of shopping days until the holiday season:
today = date$("days")
target = date$("12/25/2003") 'subsititute current year and desired holiday
print "Shopping days left: ";
print target - today