See http://purl.org/tcl/home/man/tcl8.5/TclCmd/clock.htm

In 8.5, the old (up to 8.4) '''clock scan''' command is deprecated in favour of the new 
'''clock scan -format'''.

This is covered by TIP #173 [http://www.tcl.tk/cgi-bin/tct/tip/173.html], and I understand the reasons behind creating
the new version, but I think it would be a great pity to lose a great '''usability''' aid for applications that use dates - an easy way
of letting the '''end user''' type in "yesterday" or "last week". I may be missing something, but I can't see any way to deal with this in the new version.

I guess what I am really saying is, deprecate it if you like, but don't '''ever''' take the old code out.

----
[LV] 
 set EASTERN ":America/New_York"
 set s [clock scan now -timezone $EASTERN ]
 set yesterday [clock add $s -1 day -timezone $EASTERN]
 set x [clock format $yesterday -timezone $EASTERN]
 puts $x

Of course, you don't have to do things as seperate calls - you can do it as all one call.

 set nextweek [clock add $s 1 week -timezone $EASTERN]
 set x [clock format $nextweek -timezone $EASTERN]

The '''clock add''' should provide most, if not more, capability of the old freeform clock scan, with the downside of using a slightly different notation.

----
[EMJ]

I'm sure I could code anything I need, ''but'' I was actually talking about end-users, who would rather type in "yesterday" or "last week" or "13 jan" or "jan 13" than select from a popup calendar - at the moment I just pass their input to '''clock scan''', what would I have to do if it wasn't there? 

[slebetman]: Agreed. Configuration files for most of my apps allows users to enter things this way when specifying time or time interval. Having to handle this myself means that I have to write a proc that handles possibly hundreds of cases for:
  1hour
  1 hour
  5 hours 20 seconds
  tomorrow
  yesterday
  next week
  nextmonth
  lastweek
  lastyear
  yesterday-1hour
  -4years
  ...
It's nice that clock scan already does this for me.
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[[ [Category Date and Time] ]]