I copied the following from VFP Help:

This example illustrates calling the Windows API function GetSystemTime. GetSystemTime fills in a structure of WORD (16-bit unsigned integer) values with system time information.

C Function Declaration and Struct Definition
VOID GetSystemTime(
LPSYSTEMTIME lpSystemTime // address of system time structure
);
This is the struct definition:

typedef struct _SYSTEMTIME {
WORD wYear;
WORD wMonth;
WORD wDayOfWeek;
WORD wDay;
WORD wHour;
WORD wMinute;
WORD wSecond;
WORD wMilliseconds;
} SYSTEMTIME;
Calling the Function in Visual FoxPro
The Visual FoxPro code passes GetSystemTime, a reference to a character variable, which is filled in with the WORD values.

* Visual FoxPro Code: cmdSystemTime.Click
DECLARE INTEGER GetSystemTime IN win32api STRING @
cBuff=SPACE(40)

GetSystemTime(@cBuff)
To retrieve the information from the character variable, cBuff, the following code converts 8-bit ASCII characters for year and month in the variable into 16-bit equivalents.

THIS.Parent.lblYear.Caption = ALLTRIM(STR(ASC(SUBSTR(cBuff,2)) * 256 + ASC(SUBSTR(cBuff,1))))

THIS.Parent.lblMonth.Caption = MONTH_LOC + ALLTRIM(STR(ASC(SUBSTR(cBuff,4)) * 256 + ASC(SUBSTR(cBuff,3))))

My question:

I need to understand the ALLTRIM(STR(ASC(SUBSTR(cBuff,2)) * 256 + ASC(SUBSTR(cBuff,1)))) statements.

Can someone explain the 2 and 1 in the first statement and the 4 and 3 in the second statement? I know that it is saying to capture some particular portion of cbuff. What I do not understand is why those particular characters.

And, why is the first part of each statement multiplied by 256 but not the second part?

Thanks,
John