One more date trick

Tyler Muth has a useful addition to the date functions I have published here before.

If you ever want to know how long ago a date is and you want to display it in ‘human readable’ format you (and I) could use his function.

Like this:

select date_text_format(sysdate - 3/86400) the_date from dual;
select date_text_format(sysdate - 5/1440) the_date from dual;
select date_text_format(sysdate - 1/24) the_date from dual;
select date_text_format(sysdate - 3.141549) the_date from dual;
select date_text_format(sysdate - 15) the_date from dual;
select date_text_format(sysdate - 120) the_date from dual;
select date_text_format(sysdate - 365) the_date from dual;
--------------------------------------------------------------------
3 seconds ago
5 minutes ago
1 hour ago
3 days ago
2 weeks ago
4 months ago
1 year ago

One more for the toolbox.