Time

[General]

I am trying to write a script that displays a dialog that says either good morning or good night etc. Depending on the current time. but I don’t know how to. Please help me!!!

[Ray_Barber]

Hmmm, that was fun

set theTime to do shell script “date +%H” –%H is 24 hour clock
if theTime is greater than or equal to 18 then –6 pm
display dialog “Good Night”
else if the theTime is greater than or equal to 12 and theTime is less than 18 then – 12 noon to 6 pm
display dialog “Good Afternoon”
else if the theTime is less than 12 then – before 12 noon
display dialog “Good Morning”
end if

[Rob]

That’s sweet, Greg! This is an excellent example of using the shell to simplify a script.

– Rob

[Ray_Barber]

I just happened to be playing with the date thingies today. Fun stuff, ya know…

do shell script “date +%A,\ %B\ %d\ %Y\ %T\ %jth\ day\ %Vth\ week”
–>“Saturday, August 23 2003 21:29:54 235th day 34th week”

Just to take it overboard, try this…

set theDays to do shell script “date +%j”
set x to 365 - theDays –366 for leap years
set y to do shell script “date +%A,\ %B\ %d\ %Y\ %T\ %Z\ GMT\ %z\ %jth\ day,\ %Vth\ week,\ "
return y & x & " days left 'til next year”
–> “Saturday, August 23 2003 22:00:08 CDT GMT -0500 235th day, 34th week, 130 days left 'til next year”

[Ray_Barber]

I missed a couple of things on the first script, this should work better…

set theTime to do shell script “date +%H” – %H is 24 hour clock
if theTime is greater than or equal to 18 and theTime is less than 24 then – 6 pm to Midnight
display dialog “Good Night”
else if the theTime is greater than or equal to 12 and theTime is less than 18 then – 12 noon to 6 pm
display dialog “Good Afternoon”
else if the theTime is less than 12 and theTime is greater than 0 then – before 12 noon & after Midnight
display dialog “Good Morning”
end if

[Nigel_Garvey]

Hi, Greg.

When an ‘else’ section is executed, it means that the previously tested possibilities have been eliminated, so you don’t need to test for them again:

set theTime to (time of (current date)) div hours
if theTime comes before 12 then -- before midday
  "Good morning!"
else if theTime comes before 18 then -- midday and after, but before 6 pm
  "Good afternoon!"
else -- 6 pm on
  "Good evening!"
end if
display dialog the result

[Ray_Barber]

Cool NG, I wasn’t aware of that. Thanks for the tip.