Days till Xmas

  • Article

My daughter loves christmas.  She often asks me, "how long is it till christmas?"  The problem with that is that I'm one of those people that can barely remember what year it is much less the date.  Well, it is one thing to be a flawed person and its another thing to disappoint your daughter.  Monad to the rescue!

Here is a little date math routine I wrote to help me out:

function tillXmas ()
{
$now = [DateTime]::Now
[Datetime]("12/25/" + $now.Year) - $Now
}

MSH> tillxmas

Days : 321
Hours : 18
Minutes : 8
Seconds : 26
Milliseconds : 171
Ticks : 277997061718750
TotalDays : 321.755858470775
TotalHours : 7722.14060329861
TotalMinutes : 463328.436197917
TotalSeconds : 27799706.171875
TotalMilliseconds : 27799706171.875

Thanks to Monad, I can tell my daughter how many seconds to go till Xmas!  Now if I can only get her to stop asking me in the car.

Here is an exercise for you - calculate what time I ran this example (hint - think "date math" and use the Ticks value)

Enjoy!

Jeffrey P. Snover
Monad Architect

Comments

  • Anonymous
    February 06, 2006
    I'd say you ran it far too early this morning (5:51:34)?
  • Anonymous
    February 06, 2006
    We've got a winner!  Here is the solution.

    MSH> [datetime]"12/25/2006" - [timespan]277997061718750

    Monday, February 06, 2006 5:51:33 AM

    The punchline is that there are a lot of .NET types which save you a ton pain and bugs by doing their own string parsing.  Leverage this whenever you can.

    Jeffrey P. Snover [MSFT]
  • Anonymous
    February 06, 2006
    Amen to that. Did somebody say System.Uri?
  • Anonymous
    February 06, 2006
    an other way :

    ([dateTime]"12/25/2006").addticks(-277997061718750)

    I did this for newyear with a big clock :

    http://mow001.blogspot.com/2005/12/monad-newyears-clock.html

    and for the Daylight Time change :

    http://mow001.blogspot.com/2005/10/when-to-change-your-clock-ask-monad.html

    gr //o//
  • Anonymous
    February 08, 2006
    hello,jeffery:
     I have a question to distruble you:
     where can I find more ".NET types"?I mean is there a list of ".NET type"  available in monad?
     thanks for your reply.
     applepwc
  • Anonymous
    February 08, 2006
    I'm very sorry for my inattention.
    "jeffery" should be "jeffrey"