Please anyone advice me the way to escape run-time variables in freeradius. I am using STR_TO_DATE and freeradius run-time variable is over-riding the mysql time variables SELECT STR_TO_DATE('14 Mar 2012 21:37:23','%d %M %Y %H:%i:%s') gives 2012-03-14 21:37:23 in MySQL Whereas in freeradius SELECT STR_TO_DATE('14 Mar 2012 21:37:23','%d %M %Y %H:%i:%s') gives '14 0 2011 20:001122334455:_ 14 = Current Date 0 = MTU 2011 = Current Year 001122334455 = Calling-Station-ID _ = Speed I have tried escaping as per the thread http://freeradius.1045715.n5.nabble.com/Changing-the-format-of-a-date-attrib... But no luck .. My Entire Counter is : query = "SELECT SUM(acctsessiontime) FROM tbl_acct where \ username = 'suman' AND acctstarttime BETWEEN \ (SELECT STR_TO_DATE((SELECT value FROM tbl_check \ WHERE username = 'suman' AND attribute = 'Activation'), '%d %M %Y %H:%i:%s')) \ AND (SELECT STR_TO_DATE((SELECT value FROM tbl_check WHERE username = 'suman' \ AND attribute = 'Expiration'), '%d %M %Y %H:%i:%s'))" The Above Query Ends Up Showing 14 0 2011 23:001122334455:_ Any help in this matter will be highly appreciated ! Cheers !