date arithmetic – Keep Learning Keep Living

Hi, Lately, I started to see many developer uses timestamp types (like timestamp or timestamp with time zone) wrong especially in time arithmetic. So as a short reminder, adding and subtracting numbers to/from a DATE value will add/subtract number of days:

Select Sysdate "TODAY",
       Sysdate + 1 "TOMORROW", --add 1 day
       Sysdate - 1 "YESTERDAY", --subtract 1 day
       Sysdate + (1/24) "ONE HOUR LATER", -- add one - twenty forth day, since a day has 24 hours, it adds 1 hour
       Sysdate - (1/24) "ONE HOUR BEFORE", -- remove 1 hour
       Sysdate + (1/(24*60)) "ONE MINUTE LATER", -- add 1 minute, also 24*60=1440 is used frequently
       Sysdate + (1/(24*60*60)) "ONE SECOND LATER" -- add 1 second, also 24*60*60=86400 is used frequently
From   Dual;

TODAY               TOMORROW            YESTERDAY           ONE HOUR LATER      ONE HOUR BEFORE     ONE MINUTE LATER   ONE SECOND LATER
------------------- ------------------- ------------------- ------------------- ------------------- ------------------- -------------------
2020-07-28 14:07:38 2020-07-29 14:07:38 2020-07-27 14:07:38 2020-07-28 15:07:38 2020-07-28 13:07:38 2020-07-28 14:08:38 2020-07-28 14:07:39

Select Sysdate "TODAY",

Sysdate + 1 "TOMORROW", --add 1 day

Sysdate - 1 "YESTERDAY", --subtract 1 day

Sysdate + (1/24) "ONE HOUR LATER", -- add one - twenty forth day, since a day has 24 hours, it adds 1 hour

Sysdate - (1/24) "ONE HOUR BEFORE", -- remove 1 hour

Sysdate + (1/(24*60)) "ONE MINUTE LATER", -- add 1 minute, also 24*60=1440 is used frequently

Sysdate + (1/(24*60*60)) "ONE SECOND LATER" -- add 1 second, also 24*60*60=86400 is used frequently

From Dual;

TODAY TOMORROW YESTERDAY ONE HOUR LATER ONE HOUR BEFORE ONE MINUTE LATER ONE SECOND LATER

------------------- ------------------- ------------------- ------------------- ------------------- ------------------- -------------------

2020-07-28 14:07:38 2020-07-29 14:07:38 2020-07-27 14:07:38 2020-07-28 15:07:38 2020-07-28 13:07:38 2020-07-28 14:08:38 2020-07-28 14:07:39

Basically that is all if you use add…

Tag: date arithmetic

Timestamp Arithmetic and Well Known Mistakes