ASKTIME

Request current date and time of day.

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ASKTIME

>>-ASKTIME--+--------------------+-----------------------------><
            '-ABSTIME(data-area)-'   

This command is threadsafe.

Description

ASKTIME updates the date (EIBDATE) and CICS® time-of-day clock (EIBTIME) fields in the EIB. These two fields initially contain the date and time when the task started.

In response to an ASKTIME command, CICS issues an MVS™ STCK macro and modifies this by a local time difference. For example, if your MVS TOD (hardware) clock is set to GMT, and the local time is defined as British Summer Time (BST), it is BST that is stored in the EIBTIME field.

For details of the EIB, see EIB fields.

Options

ABSTIME(data-area)
Specifies the data area for the number of milliseconds since 00:00 on 1 January 1900, which is known as absolute time. The time is taken from the system time-of-day clock, adjusted for leap seconds and to apply the local timezone offset (including daylight saving time), truncated to the millisecond, and returned as a packed decimal of length 8 bytes.

You can use FORMATTIME to change the data into other familiar formats.

Example

For example, after the following command runs:
EXEC CICS ASKTIME ABSTIME(utime)

utime contains a value similar in format to 002837962864820.

The format of data-area is:
COBOL:  PIC S9(15) COMP-3
C       char data_area[8];
PL/I:   FIXED DEC(15)
ASM:    PL8


dfhp4_asktime.html | Timestamp icon Last updated: Thursday, 27 June 2019