Converting a datetime defines as varchar field to timestamp

nguyenmk · Post by **nguyenmk** » Wed May 10, 2006 2:20 pm

Hi,

I have a datetime field defined as a varchar(20) and I need to convert it to a timestamp. The data coming in is from Teradata and is as follows:

10-MAY-2006 12:00:00

need to convert as

2006-05-10 12:00:00

I tried using StringToTimeStamp, but no luck. Any ideas how I can accomplish this?

Thanks,

Michael

ArndW · Post by **ArndW** » Thu May 11, 2006 5:21 am

Michael - could you explain "no luck"? This is the correct function to perform the conversion.

nguyenmk · Post by **nguyenmk** » Thu May 11, 2006 7:21 am

I got 19 asterisk characters "*******************"

I think the problem is the date format which has dd-mon-yyyy and I don't know how to convert that to yyyy-mm-dd, the StringtoTimeStamp expects a format of yyyy-mm-dd for the date.

Thanks,
Michael

ArndW · Post by **ArndW** » Thu May 11, 2006 9:09 am

Michael,

the StringtoTimeStamp does not expect that format, it defaults to that format. You need to specify that you need a different format, using StringToTimeStamp(In.Col,"%dd-%mmm-%yyyy %hh:%nn:%ss")