Originally posted by Falott
as far as I understand is it was a integer because I could let maya print the number. it must have to do something with the syntax how i placed the variable. you know ´""§$%2´´+.. <------------ this pretty much covers my understanding of mel 
but it´s working. that´s what matters ^^
Sorry to bring this back to life, but as I think I may have a reason for your integer issue. While programming in several other languages I would say that a string of characters can contain numbers and characters. I'm not sure quite how mel works, but do you declare variables? And if not how does it differentiate between an integer and not. Maybe the time value as stored in maya is not stored or called as an integer but as a string, maybe it includes time zones?
I'm sorry if this is absolutely useless, but maybe the whole thing needs a little more research to figure it out. I guess that your works is what matters though.