HMASK: Extracting Date-Time Components and Preserving Remaining Components

HMASK(source, 'componentstring', input, length, output)

where:

source

Is the date-time value from which the specified components are extracted.

componentstring

Is a string of codes, in any order, that indicates which components are to be extracted and moved to the output date-time field. The following table shows the valid values. The string is considered to be terminated by any character not in this list:

Code	Description
C	century (the two high-order digits only of the four-digit year)
Y	year (the two low-order digits only of the four-digit year)
YY	Four digit year.
M	month
D	day
H	hour
I	minutes
S	seconds
s	milliseconds (the three high-order digits of the six-digit microseconds value)
u	microseconds (the three low-order digits of the six-digit microseconds value)
m	All six digits of the microseconds value.
n	Low order three digits of nine decimal digits.

input

Is the date-time value that provides all the components for the output that are not specified in the component string.

length

Is the length of the returned date-time value. Valid values are:

• 8 indicates a time value that includes one to three decimal digits (milliseconds).
• 10 indicates a time value that includes four to six decimal digits (microseconds).
• 12 indicates a time value that includes seven to nine decimal digits (nanoseconds).

output

Is the field that contains the result, or the format of the output value enclosed in single quotation marks. This field must be in date-time format (data type H).