MySQL retrieves and displays TIME values in
'HH:MM:SS' format (or
'HHH:MM:SS' format for large hours values).
TIME values may range from
'-838:59:59' to
'838:59:59'. The hours part may be so large
because the TIME type can be used not only
to represent a time of day (which must be less than 24 hours),
but also elapsed time or a time interval between two events
(which may be much greater than 24 hours, or even negative).
MySQL recognizes TIME values in several
formats, described in
Section 9.1.3, “Date and Time Literals”. Some of these
formats can include a trailing fractional seconds part in up
to microseconds (6 digits) precision. Although this fractional
part is recognized, it is discarded from values stored into
TIME columns. For information about
fractional seconds support in MySQL, see
Section 11.1.5.6, “Fractional Seconds in Time Values”.
Be careful about assigning abbreviated values to a
TIME column. MySQL interprets abbreviated
TIME values with colons as time of the day.
That is, '11:12' means
'11:12:00', not
'00:11:12'. MySQL interprets abbreviated
values without colons using the assumption that the two
rightmost digits represent seconds (that is, as elapsed time
rather than as time of day). For example, you might think of
'1112' and 1112 as
meaning '11:12:00' (12 minutes after 11
o'clock), but MySQL interprets them as
'00:11:12' (11 minutes, 12 seconds).
Similarly, '12' and 12
are interpreted as '00:00:12'.
By default, values that lie outside the
TIME range but are otherwise legal are
clipped to the closest endpoint of the range. For example,
'-850:00:00' and
'850:00:00' are converted to
'-838:59:59' and
'838:59:59'. Illegal
TIME values are converted to
'00:00:00'. Note that because
'00:00:00' is itself a legal
TIME value, there is no way to tell, from a
value of '00:00:00' stored in a table,
whether the original value was specified as
'00:00:00' or whether it was illegal.
For more restrictive treatment of invalid
TIME values, enable strict SQL mode to
cause errors to occur. See Section 5.1.7, “Server SQL Modes”.