Modify the Entry/Exit Price output and Datetime format in backtest report

[youngmoneyduke]

Dear Amibroker Community,

I am currently having some issue with formating some output in the backtest report. In particular, here are some of the things I want to change:

1. The Date column: I only want the enter and exit date without the time. In other word, I would like to get rid of the 00:00:00 behind the Month/Day/Year
2. The Entry/Exit price: Some of the entry/exit price appear to have many decimal degits. How do I get rid of the extra digits and keep it nicely in 2 digit decimal place only?
   The reason I need the 2 digits format is for me to export it to csv automatically using batch function and then upload to my website.

I am supposed that I could add Custom metric, but I am just wondering if there might be any useful code I could put in my formular or any parameter/setting I could change anywhere?

Here is what I am seeing on my backtest output:

[tallship]

I'm not sure what code you're using to format the output of your backtest, but you can specify exact number of decimal digits with AddColumn(). For example, AddColumn( Close, "Close", 1.2 ); will format the close price to two decimal places.

Decimal place format is covered thoroughly in the first paragraph here: https://www.amibroker.com/guide/afl/addcolumn.html

As for the date/time formatting, I assume that you have already addressed system time settings as mentioned by Tomasz: https://forum.amibroker.com/t/how-to-run-an-exploration-with-custom-format-in-date-time-column/7047/2.

Assuming system formatting isn't the issue, I believe - based on the documentation - you should be able to get the date/time, and format it any way you would like for your needs using DateTimeToStr() and/or DateTimeFormat() - though you might have to use AddTextColumn() in your output.

https://www.amibroker.com/guide/afl/datetimetostr.html

https://www.amibroker.com/guide/afl/datetimeformat.html

Hopefully that helps some.

[youngmoneyduke]

Thank you very much @tallship
I looked into the links you share and many other solutions online.
Eventually, I found an alternative solution: get rid of the whole column with date/time all together and add another column with the right format.

Here is my solution:
Basically the process is to delete the default columns and add my custom columns.

SetOption( "NoDefaultColumns", True );
AddTextColumn( Name(), "Ticker", 1, colorDefault, colorDefault, 1 );

dt = DateTime();
dn = DateNum();

dates = DateTimeConvert( 2, dn, Null );
AddColumn( dates, "Date", formatDateTime );

Buy_dn = ValueWhen(Buy, dn);
Buy_date = DateTimeConvert(2,Buy_dn,Null);
AddColumn(Buy_date,"Buy date",formatdatetime);

This is the result:

Hopefully is helpful to anyone out there