AppleScript tip: getting the current time

A quick note about getting the current time in AppleScript in two different formats. This command

set t to (time string of (current date))

yields something like this result (depending on the time of day):

"12:48:35 PM"

but this command

set t to (time of (current date))

yields something like this result:

46218

(That's the number of seconds since midnight, in case you were wondering.)

Note that in the first case I wrote time string of and in the second case I wrote time of (omitting the string) keyword.