How to convert an interval like “1 day 01:30:00” into “25:30:00”?

Question

I need to add some intervals and use the result in Excel.

Since

sum(time.endtime-time.starttime)

returns the interval as \"1 da

Answer 1

It can be done, but I believe that the only way is through the following monstrosity (assuming your time interval column name is "ti"):

select
              to_char(floor(extract(epoch from ti)/3600),'FM00')
    || ':' || to_char(floor(cast(extract(epoch from ti) as integer) % 3600 / 60), 'FM00')
    || ':' || to_char(cast(extract(epoch from ti) as integer) % 60,'FM00')
    as hourstamp
from whatever;

See? I told you it was horrible :)

It would have been nice to think that

select to_char(ti,'HH24:MI:SS') as hourstamp from t

would worked, but alas, the HH24 format doesn't "absorb" the overflow beyond 24. The above comes (reconstructed from memory) from some code I once wrote. To avoid offending those of delicate constitution, I encapsulated the above shenanigans in a view...