pt

Current PakTime: A93FLaS == ( Fri Sep 3 15:21:36:28 2010 )

Converted PakTime: 241 == ( Mon Apr 1 00:00:00:00 2002 )

Decimal	00	01	02	03	04	05	06	07	08	09	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21	22	23	24	25	26	27	28	29	30	31	32	33	34	35	36	37	38	39	40	41	42	43	44	45	46	47	48	49	50	51	52	53	54	55	56	57	58	59	60	61	62	63
Base64	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H	I	J	K	L	M	N	O	P	Q	R	S	T	U	V	W	X	Y	Z	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h	i	j	k	l	m	n	o	p	q	r	s	t	u	v	w	x	y	z	.	_

Year
Month
Day
hour
minute
second
frame

PakTime Description

pt was created because I like abbrev. too much. I enjoy representing base-10 numbers (our familiar decimal system) as base-64 for many purposes. So I wanted a human-readable, yet still highly compact && useful mechanism to store precise time. Each character in a pt represents a unique time field (with a couple of exceptions). The fields are:

  Year, Month, Day, hour, minute, second, frame (60th-of-a-second)

They are typically utilized as a 7-character string. Examples:

  1234567
  3CAAvYq
  3CB3rdl

If you need less precision like just the date, you can take the first 3 characters. It's flexible && easy to use only as many fields as you need. Examples:

  01  (2000 January    )
  16  (2001 June       )
  241 (2002 April     1)
  3CC (2003 December 12)
  417 (2004 January   7)

The exceptions to the one-character-per-field rule are:

  0) For each 13 added to the Month,       add  64 to the Year.  
  1) If the hour field is greater than 23, add 256 to the Year.  
  2) If the Day  field is greater than 31, make the Year negative
                                              before adding 2000.

These allow any 60th-of-a-second instant from Midnight New Years of 1489 through the end of December 31st 2511 to be represented in only 7 characters. Examples:

  0                          (2000)
  _                          (2063)
  0D                         (2064)
  000O                       (2256)
  30W                        (1997)
  _eWO                       (1489)
  _pVlxxx (Dec 31 23:59:59:59 2511)

Depending on the font used, there can be some troubling ambiguity with characters like 0, O, && o, 1, I, && l, as well as 6 && G. Good fonts distinguish each of these similar but distinct characters so please employ such a font when printing a pt. Thanks. =)

The source code to represent && convert time like this is available from HTTP://Search.CPAN.Org/~Pip as Time::PT.

Smaller Graph to Fit Screen Width

Y:2

M:4

D:1

h:

m:

s:

f: