Hi!
>>>>> "Jeremy" == Jeremy Zawodny <jzawodn@stripped> writes:
Jeremy> On Wed, Nov 28, 2001 at 01:30:42PM -0800, btjones@stripped wrote:
>>
>> I think while you've got the hood up, a better method of doing the
>> difference between two dates should be derived.
>>
>> Unless I'm going about this all wrong, the only way to get the time
>> difference between two values currently is:
>>
>> UNIX_TIMESTAMP(end_datetime) - UNIX_TIMESTAMP(start_datetime)
>>
>> Wouldn't something like SECONDS_DIFF(start,end) make more sense? Or
>> perhaps TIME_DIFF(start,end)?
Jeremy> It's not the only way, but none of them are as simple as a
Jeremy> SELECT date1 - date2
The problem with implementing the above simple expression is that you
can easily run into problems because of the automatic convert of
strings to numbers. For example: What should we do if one of the
strings is a date and the other is a number or a string ?
If we would do the above, then we would also be able to handle:
SELECT "2001-01-01" - date from table_name;
SELECT "2001-01-01" - "2000-01-01";
One simple solution is to to only do this if both columns are of type
DATE. You can always 'cast' a column to date with:
SELECT DATE "2001-01-01" - DATE "2000-01-01";
How would this sound?
Regards,
Monty
