Problems with Date.toLocaleTimeString

[Beeker]

Hi Guys

We shipped our software out to a customer that contains a piece of
javascript that looks like this:

var date = new Date();
var time = date.toLocaleTimeString();

...Which works on all the QA systems and our dev machines, but doesn't
seem to work on one of the customers testing machines, they get the
following message:

"Object does not support property or method", in a `do you wish to
debug this script?` dialog. If they click yes; Microsoft Script
Debugger is launched and it complains that the second line with the
`toLocaleTimeString` method is the culprit.

They are indeed running IE 6 (v6.0.2800.1106) on a `Win2K SP4 server
box` (which in fairness we havent tested it with) but I cant understand
if they are running the same version of IE as us, why the javascript
wont work?! Should it matter they are using Win2k and we are using
Xp/2K3??? I thought the jscript library was part of IE itself?

If anybody has run into this problem, or knows why this is happening
please please please could you help me out?

Many Thanks

Tom Medhurst

[VK]

Beeker wrote:

Hi Guys

We shipped our software out to a customer that contains a piece of
javascript that looks like this:

var date = new Date();
var time = date.toLocaleTimeString();

..Which works on all the QA systems and our dev machines, but doesn't
seem to work on one of the customers testing machines, they get the
following message:

"Object does not support property or method", in a `do you wish to
debug this script?` dialog. If they click yes; Microsoft Script
Debugger is launched and it complains that the second line with the
`toLocaleTimeString` method is the culprit.

They are indeed running IE 6 (v6.0.2800.1106) on a `Win2K SP4 server
box` (which in fairness we havent tested it with) but I cant understand
if they are running the same version of IE as us, why the javascript
wont work?! Should it matter they are using Win2k and we are using
Xp/2K3??? I thought the jscript library was part of IE itself?

It also part of Windows Host installation, and this is frequently
forgotten by sysadmins. So if the admin installed/reinstalled wshost
she could override the jscript.dll back to v5.1 (supplied with Win
2000) while toLocaleTimeString supported only since v5.5

Ask your clients to run
alert(ScriptEngineMajorVersion + "." + ScriptEngineMinorVersion);
and tell the version they will see.

If I'm right then:

1) Ask the admin to reinstall the latest JScript engine from
<http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=C717D943-7E4B-4622-86EB-95A22B832CAA&displaylang=en>

2) Tell to admin to read specs before installing/reinstalling Windows
component - if he still wants to get his doughnuts :-)
P.S. Overall it would be wise to add script engine check in your code
to fall back without spooky errors. Careless admins are not so rare.

[VK]

VK wrote:

I thought the jscript library was part of IE itself?

It also part of Windows Host installation,

I mean Windows Script Host installation.

And no, it's not an internal block of IE. It is a Windows library by
its own at %windows%jscript.dll

[Beeker]

Wow, cheers for that response. Will try it out on Monday and let you
know.
I'll save the doughnuts for someone who deserves them, I think!! So
next time your in the area... ! :p

Will let you know the outcome.
Thanks again

Tom

[VK]

Beeker wrote:

Wow, cheers for that response. Will try it out on Monday and let you
know.
I'll save the doughnuts for someone who deserves them, I think!! So
next time your in the area... ! :p

Will let you know the outcome.
Thanks again

You are welcome... There is an ongoing campain run by some in Usenet to
prove that Gougle Groups users are second or even third quality people
because they unbellyfeel the Usenet As It Really Is :-) To not give
then extra arguments :-), you may want to quote some minimum of text
you are replying to.

[Dr John Stockton]

JRS: In article <11**********************@g10g2000cwb.googlegroups .com>
, dated Fri, 5 May 2006 03:36:50 remote, seen in
news:comp.lang.javascript, Beeker <to**********@exony.com> posted :

We shipped our software out to a customer that contains a piece of
javascript that looks like this:

var date = new Date();
var time = date.toLocaleTimeString();

..Which works on all the QA systems and our dev machines, but doesn't
seem to work on one of the customers testing machines,

Method toLocaleTimeString is comparatively recent.

You could probably use toLocaleString and use a RegExp replace (or other
method) to strip off the date part.

It seems safe to assume that the date part will contain \d{4} and be
delimited by whitespace, but not necessarily that it will be first.

For me,

new Date().toLocaleString().replace(/(\s?\S*\d{4}\S*\s?)/, "")
-> 23:20:30

new Date().toLocaleString()
-> 05/05/2006 23:20:43

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