RE: DATE fields in RPG-IV

[Bob Cozzi <BobCozzi@xxxxxxx>]

Ah hah!

You've hit on the hidden secret of RPG IV Date support. "It works really good 
with date fields."

Which doesn't say "It doesn't work too good with non-date type fields." <g>

Today, you basically have to pick what I call a "NULL DATE" values. A lot of 
people have chosen 0001/01/01 as that null value. 

To move between 8 and 6 digit dates is awkward anyway, so you may want to just 
use the *MDY date format.

But... you can do the following:

Move the 6-digit numeric field to your *ISO (or similar 4-digit year) date 
field.
Do you date stuff with it.
Move the ISO date to an 8-digit numeric field.
--YOU end up with 00010101 in the 8-position field.
Move or Z-ADD the 8-position date value to your 6-digit date field.
--YOU end up with 010101 in the 6-position field.

If you want it to be ZERO when it is this value, then just check the 6-position 
field at this point.



BOB COZZI
If airplanes where academically pure, we'd all be flying things with feathers 
on their wings.


On Tuesday, September 02, 1997 11:20 PM, saskia [SMTP:sfsaskia@concentric.net] 
wrote:
> We are just beginning to use RPGiv here - and many of you probably know
> how this should be done, so ....
> 
> We are looking to our Year 2000 changes.  This brings us to the DATE
> type field, and some areas of confusion:
> 
> I read a file with numeric fields for dates which = 0.   When I try to
> convert these to a date field, it results in 01/01/0001.  When I try to
> convert this back to a 6,0 numeric field, it gives an error because it
> must be in a date range 1940 to 2039 to convert to a 6,0.  We need to be
> able to convert back to numeric format for output to display file and
> printer file DDS.  How should this be handled?
> 
> thx
> -saskia
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