9.12. 'NOW'

Available inDSQL, PSQL, ESQL

Changed in2.0

TypeCHAR(3)

Description'NOW' is not a variable but a string literal. It is, however, special in the sense that when you CAST() it to a date/time type, you will get the current date and/or time. The fractional part of the time used to be always .0000, giving an effective seconds precision. Since Firebird 2.0 the precision is 3 decimals, i.e. milliseconds. 'NOW' is case-insensitive, and the engine ignores leading or trailing spaces when casting.

ⓘ
Note

Please be advised that the shorthand expressions are evaluated immediately at parse time and stay the same as long as the statement remains prepared. Thus, even if a query is executed multiple times, the value for e.g. timestamp 'now' won’t change, no matter how much time passes. If you need the value to progress (i.e. be evaluated upon every call), use a full cast.

Examples 

   |select 'Now' from rdb$database
   |-- returns 'Now'
   | 
   |select cast('Now' as date) from rdb$database
   |-- returns e.g. 2008-08-13
   | 
   |select cast('now' as time) from rdb$database
   |-- returns e.g. 14:20:19.6170
   | 
   |select cast('NOW' as timestamp) from rdb$database
   |-- returns e.g. 2008-08-13 14:20:19.6170

Shorthand syntax for the last three statements:

  |select date 'Now' from rdb$database
  |select time 'now' from rdb$database
  |select timestamp 'NOW' from rdb$database
Notes