[Jprogramming] Current time: behaviour

[Roger Hui]

Your proposed alternative
  formatString timeFormat 6!:0 ''
while apparently more flexible and more general, is
of limited utility, because very few timestamps will
be in the form used by 6!:0 -- 6 element floating point
vector, the first 5 of which has a zero fractional part.



----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark D. Niemiec" <mniemiec at interserv.com>
Date: Tuesday, October 30, 2007 19:59
Subject: Re: [Jprogramming] Current time: behaviour
To: programming at jsoftware.com

> Roger Hui <rhui000 at shaw.ca> wrote:
> > So you want to be a language implementer?  See:
> > http://www.jsoftware.com/jwiki/Essays/Timestamp_Extension
> 
> In my opinion, this function, while useful, appears to lack flexibility.
>  formatString timeFormat 6!:0 ''
> would be much useful and general than
>   6!:0 formatString
> (where timeFormat could be either another foreign or a user-defined verb),
> since it could be used to format other times as well,
> such as time-stamps adjusted by time zones, etc.
> 
> This could likely be done by a library verb, unless it is
> something that would be done often, and performance is a significant factor.
> 
> If you REALLY want the same syntax, you could get it via
>   nowFormat =: timeFormat 6!:0@(''"_)
>   nowFormat formatString