Extracting 24 hour timestramp from sysdate

Question

Hi All,
I have some 24 hour times stored as strings in a table eg 16:00, 18:30 , 04:00 ect
I'm trying to extract the 24 timestamp from SYSDATE so that I can do a comparision such as:
IF (just need timestamp from sysdate in 24 hour format here) > TO_DATE(r.wave_finish_time,'HH24:MI') THEN...
ANy ideas on how to extract the timestamp from sysdate in 24 hour format?
Cheers in advance!
Regards
Sat

Answer 1

This will give you an idea (apart from the suggestions already offered).
If not, let us know.
SQL> with some_time_strings as (
  2  select '01:00' my_time from dual union all
  3  select '02:00' from dual union all
  4  select '03:00' from dual union all
  5  select '04:00' from dual union all
  6  select '05:00' from dual union all
  7  select '06:00' from dual union all
  8  select '07:00' from dual union all
  9  select '08:00' from dual union all
10  select '09:00' from dual union all
11  select '10:00' from dual union all
12  select '11:00' from dual union all
13  select '12:00' from dual union all
14  select '13:00' from dual union all
15  select '14:00' from dual union all
16  select '15:00' from dual
17  )
18  select *
19  from   some_time_strings
20  where  my_time > to_char(to_date('01-01-2009 04:50', 'dd-mm-yyyy hh24:mi'), 'hh24:mi');
05:00
06:00
07:00
08:00
09:00
10:00
11:00
12:00
13:00
14:00
15:00
11 rijen zijn geselecteerd.Explanation in short:
to_char(to_date('01-01-2009 04:50', 'dd-mm-yyyy hh24:mi'), 'hh24:mi');
means
=> to_date('01-01-2009 04:50', 'dd-mm-yyyy hh24:mi') = the date part, could also be sysdate or any DATE
=> to_char( the date part, 'hh24:mi'); = the VARCHAR2 FORMAT part, you really need to use that, since your 'time' is in fact a string.
Edited by: hoek on Apr 17, 2009 6:51 PM added some extra words, because of the weather