This interests me too. I have often wanted to try it but other more important things come up.

It is actually numeric. You need to do something like this:

#code to pull and set the starting day
$szStartDay = $Day
#your code runs for a certain amount of days

#code to pull and set the current day
$szCurrentDay = $Day
#code to do the math to figure out how many days passed

How do you handle the calculation if the time spans multiple months?

@dbeard.

I've posted the following link to a thead where I asked for script advice for a robot to say exactly how old it is. It uses the day, month ect, variables to set an age and then calculates his age using the computers clock whenever asked. You might be able to get some useful info from the scripts @Rich posted for me, as they are based on the same princible to what you're looking for. Hopefully you can find some useful elements from the scripts to make what you're looking to do. Hope it helps.

Asking a robot for its age scripts

Steve, thanks for the information. but I need it down to the day level, not years. I cant figure out how to count the days, when some months have more days then others. I am trying to figure out the number of days that have elapsed over time.

If you are going to use a database as your other pose suggests, I would pass the dates to a function in the database to do this. It would have a date different function.

No, actually two different things. The date calculation is to count days, unrelated to the calendar. more of an elapsed days counter.

If you have the tools available in the database, why not just use them to do what you need to do? If you have it, use it. It can easily be passed back into ARC via a variable. As you would want an app to access the database anyway, you could also just do the date diff function inside of the app. You can pass switches to the application to have it perform specific tasks. You would also be able to include the dates you want to compare.

It might be possible in a script. I don't know. I personally call could based services to do this. Wolfram alpha allows personal users to make an api that can handle 2000 calls a month. It handles these types of questions very well.

What is a wolfram alpha? I am a beginner, trying to learn ez robot script language. I was hoping I could see an example of someone else's script language. But maybe no one has done anything like this before. I do appreciate your comments d.cochran but you are definitely an advanced user.

I have seen examples of this being done in c++ but not sure how to put it into script language. see below (partial code I found)

Days in-between dates

002 // Compiled in Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition

003 // Language: C++/STL

004

005

006 #include<iostream>

007

008 using namespace std;

009

010

011

012

013 int main()

014 {

015

016 int days_in_months[] = {31, 28, 31, 30, 31, 30, 31, 31, 30, 31, 30, 31};

017

018 int first_day, second_day;

019

020 int first_month, second_month;

021

022 int first_year, second_year;

023

024 int years_difference, days_difference;

025

026 int months_total;

027

028 int reg_year = 365;

029

030

031

032 cout<<"Program to calculate how many days are in between the day/month/year entered."<<endl;

033 cout<<endl;

034

035 cout<<"Please enter the date by day, month, year."<<endl;

036 cout<<endl;

037

038 cout<<"First date:: "<<endl;

039 cout<<endl;

040

041 cout<<"Day: ";

042 cin>>first_day;

043 if(first_day > 31 || first_day <= 0)

044 {

045 cout<<"Incorrect day entered"<<endl;

046 cin.ignore();

047 return 0;

048 }

049 cout<<"Month: ";

050 cin>>first_month;

051 if(first_month > 12 || first_month <= 0)

052 {

053 cout<<"Incorrect Month entered"<<endl;

054 cin.ignore();

055 return 0;

056 }

057 cout<<"Year: ";

058 cin>>first_year;

059 if(first_year > 9999 || first_year < 0)

060 {

061 cout<<"Incorrect Year Entered"<<endl;

062 cin.ignore();

063 return 0;

064 }

065

066 cout<<endl;

067 cout<<"\nSecond date:: "<<endl;

068 cout<<endl;

069

070 cout<<"Day: ";

071 cin>>second_day;

072 if(second_day > 31 || second_day <= 0)

073 {

074 cout<<"Incorrect day entered"<<endl;

075 cin.ignore();

076 return 0;

077 }

078 cout<<"Month: ";

079 cin>>second_month;

080 if(second_month > 12 || second_month <= 0)

081 {

082 cout<<"Incorrect Month entered"<<endl;

083 cin.ignore();

084 return 0;

085 }

086 cout<<"Year: ";

087 cin>>second_year;

088 if(second_year > 9999 || second_year < 0)

089 {

090 cout<<"Incorrect Year Entered"<<endl;

091 cin.ignore();

092 return 0;

093 }

094

095

096 /////////////////////////////Years/////////////////////////////////

This code just sets up the parameters and then asks for the dates. It does some validation on the dates but doesn't do any calculations. I assume that the remainder of the code has been truncated?

correct. I wasn't going to paste the whole thing, just show an example of it being done through code.

Okay no worries. I just wanted to mention that the scripts in the birthday link don't just use years, but months as well, and using the date/time variables, you can also do days, hours, or minutes if desired. Can you give us an application example of what you would use this kind of script for, it might help give us to guide you better.

sure. I am going to use the calculation to determine how many days have gone past since a particular update. I can figure it out as long as it happens within the month. My problem is when the days go across a month how to figure it out. I have to calculate, what month, how many days in the month, etc...

Nothing to do with a calendar or birthdays. If the update is 2 days old I want to take one action if 3 days old another action. In no scenario do I see the elapsed time being over 3 days. so never months or years. I played around with it some, but cant figure out how to even compare one date to another, the script wants to treat the date as a alphanumeric, not numeric. so things line < > don't work at least for me.

hope that helps.

Okay thanks for that. That makes it a lot clearer to what you're looking to do. I won't be near a computer with ARC on it for a day or two, but when I get a chance I'll see if I can work something out for you, unless somebody else comes up with a solution of example in the mean time.

that works for me. thanks for your time.

Had to pick someone. But certainly Steve G. assisted.