WScript number formatting help/question

Leading zeros for intergers?

Published on September 19, 2007 By Chris TH In DesktopX Development

Hi to all the WScript & VBS gurus - hoping you can give a relative nube a hand...

I'm tring to format numbers in the range 0-99 with a field width of 2 i.e the single digits 0-9 should contain a leading zero makeing 00-09. In other words like the C comand:

printf("%02d",...)

I've been scouring the WScript 5.6 documentation but so far no joy.

My intended purpose is to be able to create a date string in the form YYYYMMDD in which the MM & DD fields must always be 2 digits (and YYYY 4 digits) from the PC's current date value.

Up until now I've been using the FormatDateTime function, but that is dependant on the ShortDate & Locale settings of the PC which has caused me trouble in the past when it changes. It would make life so much easier if I could create this format independantly of the PC Locale by taking the Day, Month & Year values individually, formatting & concatenating them into what I want.

Looking forward to any suggestions...

Comments

Chris TH

on Sep 19, 2007

Dare I... ?!

bump

Chris TH

on Sep 21, 2007

Somebody ? Anybody ? Bueller ?

Vad_M

on Sep 21, 2007

(If I have correctly understood you...) Somewhere in your script you have the numbers 0,1,2,3,... but you need see 00,01,02,03,....

Try this simple fynction:

for example your data is named "mynumber"

i.e. mynumber = 0,1,2,3....

desktopx.object("output").text = AddZero(mynumber)

Function AddZero(val)
If len(val) = 1 Then AddZero = "0"&val Else AddZero = val
End Function

Sorry if this couldn't help you.

thomassen

on Sep 21, 2007

In VBS you can use FormatDateTime to format according to the computers locale setting. That might be better than to force a custom formatting on people.

Other than that, I've yet not found a native VBS or JScript function that formats numbers, strings like this.

I've ended up making my own padding function.

Chris TH

on Sep 21, 2007

Thanks Vad_M - your assumption is entirely correct although I was hoping to avoid having to 'roll my own' function so to speak... guess I was spoiled in my C programming days

Thanks also thomassen, your reply is gratefully accepted, although this is what I have used up until now. The problem is my script will be deployed on systems that may have varying configurations for the locale/region settings which is why I was hoping to find a 'universal' solution.

Thanks to both of you for at least clarifying the situation - now I at least know in which direction to proceed!

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