Time Interval Format Templates
Time interval formats show the amount of elapsed time rather than an absolute date or time. Use interval templates for a date entry field that contains interval data.
As with the date format, you specify time interval formats by using a string to indicate exactly how you want a time interval to be printed. A representative interval has been selected to provide the example values you can use when specifying how you want the time to be printed. This example time interval is:
1 year 2 months 3 days 4 hours 5 minutes 6 seconds
You can arrange various combinations of the units of the time interval in any order.
Guidelines for Using Time Interval Templates
Observe the following guidelines when using interval templates:
• There are 30.4375 days in a month and 365.25 days in a year.
The smallest unit specified is rounded up.
• Numbers requiring more than one digit use up preceding blanks or zeros.
If there are no preceding blanks or zeros to the left, the number expands to the right. A blank following a letter, word, or number is not used up by a succeeding number. You can line up columns of numbers by preceding them with an appropriate number of blanks or zeros.
• The word immediately following a number is made singular if the number is one, or plural if the number is zero or greater than one.
You can prevent this behavior by preceding the word with a backslash (\). Any character preceded by a backslash is printed as you enter it.
Examples of Time Interval Templates
The following table provides examples of time interval templates: