System time format

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October 22nd, 2002, 10:40 AM
Elrond

System time format (Answer found)

Hi,

do you know how I can get the system time format from Windows?

My problem is that I have the date as a string, under a format I know about. I want to create a csv file to be able to open it in Excel. Excel use the system format to look if a string is a date or not.

The problem will mainly appear for month/day. Usually, english format will be: "10/22/2002" while some other formats will be "22/10/2002".

I need to know how to format the string in order to have excel recognise the string as a date, and not as a simple string. This is a window setting as you can change it in the control panel, so there must be some API function to look for it, but I don't know which...

Any idea?
October 22nd, 2002, 10:47 AM
Doctor Luz

take a look at setlocale()

may be could help you.
October 22nd, 2002, 10:54 AM
Elrond

Answer found

Thanks.

What I was looking for is the format item %c.
October 22nd, 2002, 12:41 PM
Sam Hobbs

If the data is for a cell then it is possible to set the cell format. That way Excel is much more likely to process the data as a date.
October 22nd, 2002, 02:25 PM
alpha137

Quote:

...This is a window setting as you can change it in the control panel, so there must be some API function to look for it, but I don't know which...

The Windows SDK function to query locale settings is GetLocaleInfo.
October 23rd, 2002, 01:50 AM
Elrond

Quote:

Originally posted by Sam Hobbs
If the data is for a cell then it is possible to set the cell format. That way Excel is much more likely to process the data as a date.

That's to write in a CSV format file, so it's not possible to set a cell format. On the other hand, even if you set the cell format as a date, if the string does not have the date and day in the correct position, at best it is just recognised as a string (if the day is more than 12), or even worse, it will invert month and day!!!!

So I think the best is to use the proper format for the string in the first place.
October 23rd, 2002, 01:51 AM
Elrond

Quote:

Originally posted by alpha137
The Windows SDK function to query locale settings is GetLocaleInfo.

Thanks.

As I'm just interested in the date/time format the %c format item does it much more easily (and probably quickly) for me.