What's In A Name?

The numeric part of the filename is a unix time (number of seconds since the Epoch). If you're on a unix box (or mac os X), there are a number of command-line ways to convert it. Here's a quick one:


> tclsh

% clock format 1166569200

Tue Dec 19 18:00:00 EST 2006


On windows, I think there's an excel function you can use but can't recall it off hand.

FWIW, Unix keeps time in seconds from an epoch, Excel in days from a different epoch. So the conversion requires converting from seconds to days and adjusting for the difference in epochs and time zone.


If the Unix time is in cell A1, the Excel formula is

=DATE(1970,1,1)+(A1/60/60/24)-TIME(5,0,0)

which takes the Unix epoch: DATE(1970,1,1)

and adds the Unix time converted to days: (A1/60/60/24)

and subtracts the offset between GMT and EST: TIME(5,0,0)