Sorry, I misunderstood the context.
sqlite> select * from datetest; k d ---------- ------------------- 1 2005-03-17T16:21:30 sqlite> select strftime("%m", substr(d,1,10)||' '||substr(d,-8,8)) ...> from datetest; strftime("%m", substr(d,1,10)||' '||substr(d,-8,8)) --------------------------------------------------- 03 sqlite> select abs(strftime("%m", substr(d,1,10)||' '||substr(d,-8,8))) ...> from datetest; abs(strftime("%m", substr(d,1,10)||' '||substr(d,-8,8))) -------------------------------------------------------- 3