I have a device that sends data over the serial port with a timestamp in this format:

(230424194642W)

This is coded as yymmddhhnnss and the last char designates daylight savings (S)ummer or normal (W)inter time. In the example above it is W for normal winter time.

What I have done so far is:
- Remove the () at start and end
- Remove the W at the end
- Add 20 (as the century) up front
- Insert a space after the 6th char (so between date and time
- Set the TFormatsettings like this (to say that there are no separators):

  FS.DateSeparator := #0; (Is this how it is done?)
  FS.TimeSeparator := #0;

- Then the call:

  Value := StrToDateTime(sValue, FS); (Value is declared as TDateTime)

This triggers an exception with the message:
"194522" is not a valid time

What is the proper way to decode a string as shown above? Since the date part could be decoded, why not also the time part, after all I separated the two with a space and set the same separators?

I always use ScanDateTime for such purposes:

https://www.freepascal.org/docs-html/rtl/dateutils/scandatetime.html

You can explicitly define the pattern.

Correct. This is the only correct way to do this.

StrToDateTime is very limited in what it accepts.

Michael.

Thanks, I did not know about this before, but now it is inserted in my code and works fine. :-)

So now I can just specify the pattern of data to be scanned using the y, m, h, n and s letters.
But I am adding 20 on front of the telegram value because that uses only a 2-digit year and I had problems on my new RPiZero until I added the two yy in front of the pattern making it a 4-char year and the 20 in front of the telegram.

Then all works fine.