VMS Help Lexicals, F$TIME, Return Value  *Conan The Librarian (sorry for the slow response - running on an old VAX)

    A character string containing the current date and time. The
    returned string has the following fixed, 23-character format:

    dd-mmm-yyyy hh:mm:ss.cc

    When the current day of the month is any of the values 1 to 9,
    the first character in the returned string is a blank character.
    The time portion of the string is always in character position
    13, at an offset of 12 characters from the beginning of the
    string.

    Note that you must use the assignment operator (=)  to preserve
    the blank character in the returned string. If you use the string
    assignment operator (:=),  the leading blank is dropped.