MQL4 Reference Language Basics Data Types Integer Types Datetime Type

Datetime Type

The datetime type is intended for storing the date and time as the number of seconds elapsed since January 01, 1970. This type occupies 8 bytes of memory.

Constants of the date and time can be represented as a literal string, which consists of 6 parts showing the numerical value of the year, month, day (or day, month, year), hours, minutes and seconds. The constant is enclosed in single quotation marks and starts with the D character.

Values range from 1 January, 1970 to 31 December, 3000. Either date (year , month, day) or time (hours, minutes, seconds), or all together can be omitted.

With literal date specification, it is desirable that you specify year, month and day. Otherwise the compiler returns a warning about an incomplete entry.

Examples:

datetime NY=D'2015.01.01 00:00';     // Time of beginning of year 2015
datetime d1=D'1980.07.19 12:30:27';  // Year Month Day Hours Minutes Seconds
datetime d2=D'19.07.1980 12:30:27';  // Equal to D'1980.07.19 12:30:27';
datetime d3=D'19.07.1980 12';        // Equal to D'1980.07.19 12:00:00'
datetime d4=D'01.01.2004';           // Equal to D'01.01.2004 00:00:00'
datetime compilation_date=__DATE__;             // Compilation date
datetime compilation_date_time=__DATETIME__;    // Compilation date and time
datetime compilation_time=__DATETIME__-__DATE__;// Compilation time
//--- Examples of declarations after which compiler warnings will be returned
datetime warning1=D'12:30:27';       // Equal to D'[date of compilation] 12:30:27'
datetime warning2=D'';               // Equal to __DATETIME__

The string representation of datetime type depends on compilation mode:

datetime date=D'2014.03.05 15:46:58';
string str="mydate="+date;
//--- str="mydate=1394034418" - without #property strict
//--- str="mydate=2014.03.05 15:46:58" - with #property strict