Re: Y2K Blowup

["Dennis Lovelady" <dennis@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi, Dean:


>just BPCS-specific.  Have any of you folks with sturdy (but non-compliant)
>applications taking advantage of the DATE type variable requiring a valid
date
>that uses 9/9/99 as the default upper limit for report delimiting consider
>what will happen when your data exceeds September ninth of this year?  I
once

I have heard others refer to this "magic date" of 9/9/99, and I'm inclined to
say, "Hogwash!"  Let's look at the likely ways of storing that date:
   990909  YMD
   090999  MDY or DMY
   9/9/99  MDY (DMY) with slashes (character)
   99/9/9  Hey, I can't give you *all* the answers, can I?

THIS DATE WOULD NOT BE STORED AS 9999.  The programming to figure out that
type of date storage would be horrendous and ugly!  You NEED two positions
for day, and two for month.  (OK, you can get by with base 31, but that's
another issue entirely.)

Now, in the second case, that value has obviously been exceeded hundreds of
times, since Month is frequently greater than 9, and Day is usually greater
than 9 (120180 > 090999).  In the third and fourth cases, it's a character
compare, and 9/10 is alphabetically lower than 9/9 on any computer system
that I have ever seen.  If the first case blows up on 9/9/99, then someone
should be shot, because they're obviously comparing to an arbitrary value
which is a valid date!

That's my inclination.  Tell me why it's wrong, OK?
Dennis
--
Dennis Lovelady                    Simpsonville, SC
mail: dennis@lovelady.com
URL:  http://lovelady.piedmont.net
ICQ:  5734860
--
"Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils."
        - Hector Berlioz


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