Re: 2 digit YY on screens & 4 in DB -Reply

[David Morris <dmorris@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>> John Carr <74711.77@CompuServe.COM> 09/15 10:10 pm >>>

Date: 9/15/97  5:34 PM

RE: Re: 2 digit YY on screens & 4 in DB

>Fred Mitchell said;

>>We still intend to hold all dates as the full 8 digits on the files but
>>only dates such as date of birth/retirement will request the user to
>>enter all 8 digits. Other dates will be input/displayed as six digit
>>dates and we will use windowing to determine the century before
writing
>>the data back to the file.
>>Fred Mitchell                                           
>fred@mitchf.demon.co.uk
>>Newcastle upon Tyne, England                     
http://www.mitchf.demon.co.uk

>What would the program's understanding of the following be?
>(or "What did the User Intend"?)

>01/02/03
>02/03/01
>03/02/01

>In which one did I think I was entering D/M/Y 
>Which one was M/D/Y
>Which one was Y/M/D

>John Carr

Are you just playing the devils advocate or do you really change date
formats between applications?  What is the reason?  Even our
purchased packages force us to set a single date format.  All of our
programs use the *JOB format (defaulted from QDATFMT) to
determine the order of a date field.  All dates are defined in files as
date *USA.  We use a single service program to parse all date entries
and convert to the common *USA  format.  The input format to this
program determines whether it is entered as MD future, MDY past,
etc.  We name these formats and pass the name to this common
program where they are verified, and if valid, expanded to the full
output format.  There is no guessing.

David Morris                      
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