Computing time spent

[Sara House]

Hey everyone -

This is probably easy to do but I seem to be stumped (it is Friday after all).  I have a variable of start time on a task and another variable that is finish time.  I want to compute how much time they spent on the task from these variables.  How would I do this?  I would prefer syntax but I'll take what I can get.

Sara House
[hidden email]

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[ViAnn Beadle]

Look at the datediff function to see if that'll work. Alternatively,
assuming that both are datetime variables you can subtract time2 from time1
which will give you time in seconds and then you can go from there to the
correct level of granularity through division.

-----Original Message-----
From: SPSSX(r) Discussion [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of
Sara House
Sent: Friday, February 15, 2008 1:42 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Computing time spent

Hey everyone -

This is probably easy to do but I seem to be stumped (it is Friday after
all).  I have a variable of start time on a task and another variable that
is finish time.  I want to compute how much time they spent on the task from
these variables.  How would I do this?  I would prefer syntax but I'll take
what I can get.

Sara House
[hidden email]

=====================
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[Marks, Jim]

Sara:
COMPUTE timegap =End_time - start_time.

gives the difference in seconds. You can calculate up to larger
intervals-- 86,400 seconds per day for e.g.

Or you can use DATEDIFF to get standard date units.

COMPUTE timegap = DATEDIFF(end_time,start_time,"months").

the help file says valid date units are
Years
Quarters
Months
Weeks
Days
Hours
Minutes
Seconds

HTH
--jim

-----Original Message-----
From: SPSSX(r) Discussion [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of
Sara House
Sent: Friday, February 15, 2008 2:42 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Computing time spent

Hey everyone -

This is probably easy to do but I seem to be stumped (it is Friday after
all).  I have a variable of start time on a task and another variable
that is finish time.  I want to compute how much time they spent on the
task from these variables.  How would I do this?  I would prefer syntax
but I'll take what I can get.

Sara House
[hidden email]

=====================
To manage your subscription to SPSSX-L, send a message to
[hidden email] (not to SPSSX-L), with no body text except the
command. To leave the list, send the command SIGNOFF SPSSX-L For a list
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[Richard Ristow]

At 03:47 PM 2/15/2008, ViAnn Beadle wrote:

>Assuming that both are datetime variables you can subtract time2
>from time1 which will give you time in seconds and then you can go
>from there to the correct level of granularity through division.

Exactly. Though, instead of division, I think it gives more readable
code to use the CTIME functions:

CTIME.MINUTES(time2-time1), or CTIME.HOURS(time2.time1), or CTIME.DAYS

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