Jacob:

I agree with David, just use SELECT. Also, when I tested your echo command, it works for me:

> !echo Delete from table yutz at $(date +"%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")
Delete from table yutz at 2026-09-22 14:56:35
> select "Delete from table yutz at " || current year to second;

(expression)                                                       

Delete from table yutz at 2026-09-22 14:57:21                    
               

Art

Art,

it worked for me as well, as jacob.  Bur jacob's login shell is ksh so any command I spawn from within dbaccess runs under ksh.  Hence, the $(date...) syntax was acceptable.  But in  my environment, informix's login shell is csh, which does not likes that syntax.  Hence, my workaround.  Also, you didn't get any stty complaints for at least one of all of these reasons.

• You are running it interactively and your STDIN is the terminal, which will not engender complaints from the stty command in your .kshrc.  I am running in a script and sending th SQL commands via a pipe so stty complains.  I have otehr reasons for using the pipe and I don't want to complicate things by including that technique here.
• You may have no stty commands in in you .kshrc

One advantage in using my workaround over David's SELECT is that I chose to run with dbaccess -e (echo the SQL commands) and the SELECT get's in the way a bit.  So my choice is the stty errors before each command or the visible SELECT, along with the useless "1 rows retrieved".  Either way is imperfect but it's humming along now so I don't mind.

Jacob:

I agree with David, just use SELECT. Also, when I tested your echo command, it works for me:

> !echo Delete from table yutz at $(date +"%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")
Delete from table yutz at 2026-09-22 14:56:35
> select "Delete from table yutz at " || current year to second;

(expression)                                                       

Delete from table yutz at 2026-09-22 14:57:21                    
               

Art

Jacob:

OK. Note that if you redirect stderr then the "1 rows retrieved" goes poof! Witness:

$ dbaccess art - 2>/dev/null
> select "Delete from table yutz at " || current year to second;

(expression)                                                       

Delete from table yutz at 2026-09-22 16:55:03                    
               
> 

Art,

it worked for me as well, as jacob.  Bur jacob's login shell is ksh so any command I spawn from within dbaccess runs under ksh.  Hence, the $(date...) syntax was acceptable.  But in  my environment, informix's login shell is csh, which does not likes that syntax.  Hence, my workaround.  Also, you didn't get any stty complaints for at least one of all of these reasons.

• You are running it interactively and your STDIN is the terminal, which will not engender complaints from the stty command in your .kshrc.  I am running in a script and sending th SQL commands via a pipe so stty complains.  I have otehr reasons for using the pipe and I don't want to complicate things by including that technique here.
• You may have no stty commands in in you .kshrc

One advantage in using my workaround over David's SELECT is that I chose to run with dbaccess -e (echo the SQL commands) and the SELECT get's in the way a bit.  So my choice is the stty errors before each command or the visible SELECT, along with the useless "1 rows retrieved".  Either way is imperfect but it's humming along now so I don't mind.

Jacob:

OK. Note that if you redirect stderr then the "1 rows retrieved" goes poof! Witness:

$ dbaccess art - 2>/dev/null
> select "Delete from table yutz at " || current year to second;

(expression)                                                       

Delete from table yutz at 2026-09-22 16:55:03                    
               
> 

Art,

it worked for me as well, as jacob.  Bur jacob's login shell is ksh so any command I spawn from within dbaccess runs under ksh.  Hence, the $(date...) syntax was acceptable.  But in  my environment, informix's login shell is csh, which does not likes that syntax.  Hence, my workaround.  Also, you didn't get any stty complaints for at least one of all of these reasons.

• You are running it interactively and your STDIN is the terminal, which will not engender complaints from the stty command in your .kshrc.  I am running in a script and sending th SQL commands via a pipe so stty complains.  I have otehr reasons for using the pipe and I don't want to complicate things by including that technique here.
• You may have no stty commands in in you .kshrc

One advantage in using my workaround over David's SELECT is that I chose to run with dbaccess -e (echo the SQL commands) and the SELECT get's in the way a bit.  So my choice is the stty errors before each command or the visible SELECT, along with the useless "1 rows retrieved".  Either way is imperfect but it's humming along now so I don't mind.

Jacob:

OK. Note that if you redirect stderr then the "1 rows retrieved" goes poof! Witness:

$ dbaccess art - 2>/dev/null
> select "Delete from table yutz at " || current year to second;

(expression)                                                       

Delete from table yutz at 2026-09-22 16:55:03                    
               
> 

That's a useful workaround to share. Adding messages and timestamps directly into a long SQL script can make it much easier to track which operations have completed and identify where something goes wrong.