Time Stamp and byte array

Question

Hi, I'm trying to insert a timestamp (hour:min:sec) into a two-byte array and i'm a little confused on how to accomplish this...any help is greatly appreciated!

int Hour = CTime::GetCurrentTime().GetHour(); 
int Minute = CTime::GetCurrentTime().GetMinute(); 
int Second = CTime::GetCurrentTime().GetSecond(); 

BYTE arry[2];

//Need to insert 'Hour', 'Minute', & 'Second' into 'arry'

Thanks!

Answer 1

You can't. There are potentially 86402 seconds in a day (a day can have up to two leap seconds), but the 16 bits available to you in a byte[2] array can only represent 65536 separate values.

Answer 2

1. hour:min:sec is not what people call timestamp. A timestamp is the number of seconds elapsed since 1970-01-01 and will surely not fit into 16 bits.
2. Assuming ranges of hours=[0;24], minutes=[0;60], seconds=[0;60] (leap seconds included) you will need 5+6+6=17 bits which still won't fit into 16 bits.

If you had a 32-bit array, it would fit:

int Hour = CTime::GetCurrentTime().GetHour(); 
int Minute = CTime::GetCurrentTime().GetMinute(); 
int Second = CTime::GetCurrentTime().GetSecond(); 

uint8_t array[4];

// Just an example
*(uint32_t*)array = (Hour << 12) | (Minute << 6) | Second;

This sounds somewhat like homework for me... or what is the exact purpose of doing this?