HEX Date creation

[Jim]

Can someone tell me how the following date and time is created to the
Hex value (also shown below)?

Tuesday, July 08, 2003 10:56:38 AM

hex:00,90,a6,7b ,66,45,c3,01

I need to be able to create the hex value for any date, but am not
sure how to break it down. Serail Parts?

[FISH]

Re: HEX Date creation

james.overland@ teldta.com (Jim) wrote in message news:<e5679de0. 0307081040.7a61 8e8d@posting.go ogle.com>...[color=blue]
> Can someone tell me how the following date and time is created to the
> Hex value (also shown below)?
>
> Tuesday, July 08, 2003 10:56:38 AM
>
> hex:00,90,a6,7b ,66,45,c3,01
>
> I need to be able to create the hex value for any date, but am not
> sure how to break it down. Serail Parts?[/color]


Timestamps can be expressed as seconds or milliseconds since a
given epoch. If you check out java.util.Date you'll see it can
'convert' dates to and from this type of format, using a 'long'.

There are eight hex numbers above, each representing a byte.
The first thing to try is to see if these bytes represent a
long, by forming the digits into a String (minus the commas)
and converting said string to a Date object by parsing the
value using base 16.

String hexString="0090 a67b6645c301"; // Woundn't be hardcoded!
Date d = new Date(Long.parse Long(hexString, 16));

Obviously this will only work if the value represented by the
hex string is scaled the same as Java expects (ie: measures
milliseconds, not seconds) and uses the same epoch. If not,
you'll have to tinker with the long value to get it in the same
scale, and/or adjust the epoch. (Java uses Jan 1st 1970 00:00:00
GMT --- other languages/API's use 1900 not 1970!)


-FISH- ><>