11.20. 'TODAY'

Available inDSQL, PSQL, ESQL

TypeCHAR(5)

'TODAY' is not a variable, but a string literal or date mnemonic. It is, however, special in the sense that when you CAST() it to a date/time type, you will get the current date. 'TODAY' is case-insensitive, and the engine ignores leading or trailing spaces when casting.

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Note

  • 'TODAY' always returns the actual date, even in PSQL modules, where Section 11.2, “CURRENT_DATE”, Section 11.4, “CURRENT_TIME” and Section 11.5, “CURRENT_TIMESTAMP” return the same value throughout the duration of the outermost routine. This makes 'TODAY' useful for measuring time intervals in triggers, procedures and executable blocks (at least if your procedures are running for days).

  • Except in the situation mentioned above, reading CURRENT_DATE, is generally preferable to casting 'TODAY'.

  • Firebird 3.0 and earlier allowed the use of 'TODAY' in datetime literals (a.k.a. "`shorthand casts"`), this is no longer allowed in Firebird 4.0.

Examples 

  |select 'Today' from rdb$database
  |-- returns 'Today'
  | 
  |select cast('Today' as date) from rdb$database
  |-- returns e.g. 2011-10-03
  | 
  |select cast('TODAY' as timestamp) from rdb$database
  |-- returns e.g. 2011-10-03 00:00:00.0000