RE: REXX and dates from commands

Sorry, but the only date information in the manuals is for retrieving the
system date to REXX. Also, according to the programmer's guide, the command
line arguments are passed to REXX in the form typed.

There are indeed many code examples in the manuals; however, none deal with
incoming date data from a command.

I was hoping to find out where command date conversion to the CYMD format
occurs - is it in the command processor, the CL compiler, or setup for the
appropriate command environment. I'm thinking it's the difference from
specifying a program CPP versus a REXX CPP, as any program CPP receives
dates in the CYMD format. That does make data conversion and separation an
issue, as my understanding of the command processor was to provide a
consistent format for dates, regardless of the input format. (Given a valid
date, of course.)

I *could* write a CL CPP that passes the parms straight to the REXX
procedure, but that would be pretty terrible.

Thanks,
Loyd

Loyd Goodbar
Senior programmer/analyst
BorgWarner
E/TS Water Valley
662-473-5713

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Bryan Dietz
Sent: Monday, October 03, 2005 09:17
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: REXX and dates from commands

I am almost certain that in the REXX manuals:
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/iseries/v5r3/ic2924/index.htm?info/
apis/hll4.htm

you will find the answer.  There is a bunch of conversion routines.


_____________________________
Bryan Dietz
Aktion Associates


midrange-l-bounces+bdietz=aktion.com@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote on 10/03/2005
10:02:07 AM:

> I have a question regarding using REXX as a command processing program,
and
> passing date data types from a command.
>
>
>
> In a command/CL processing environment, date data types are passed in
CYMD
> format. In a command/REXX processing environment, dates appear to be
passed
> in the form they are typed, not in a standardized format.
>
>
>
> The REXX code to receive the date parameter is:
>
> Parse arg 'COSTDATE(' costdate ')'
>
>
>
> The command defines costdate as a date data type.
>
>
>
> If I run the command with costdate(090105), the data is passed as
'090105'
> to REXX; costdate('09/01/2005') is passed as '09/01/2005'. In both
instances
> a CL program would receive '1050901'.
>
>
>
> What techniques do you use when using dates passed from a command to a
REXX
> command processing program? Is there a standard API I can call to perform
> the conversion?
>
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Loyd
>
>