Date-time values are stored and calculated as the number of seconds since midnight, January 1, 1904. For example:
Today(); // returns 3388649872 on May 19, 2011 at 12:00:00 AM
As with Today(), the Date DMY() and Date MDY() functions also return month, day, and year arguments as seconds. For example, if it were 12:00:00 a.m. on May 19, 2011, all of the following statements would return the same value:
Date DMY( 19, 5, 2011 );
Date MDY( 5, 19, 2011 );
Today();
3388608000
The As Date() function takes the number of seconds and displays it as a date or duration.
• Values that represent one year or more are returned as dates:
As Date( 3388608000 );
19May2011
• Values that represent less than a year are returned as durations.
As Date( 50000 );
:0:13:53:20
You can use date-time values in two ways:
• a literal value, for example 19May2011:10:10
• a string, for example "Thursday, May 19, 2011"
You can perform arithmetic with date-time literals, which use the number of seconds as the base number.
As Date( 19May2011 + 1 );
19May2011:00:00:01