Re: Those flippin dates

Pete,

As you found out, EVAL expressions don't like overflow. The whole math technique was predicated on overflow (i.e., digits flying off into neverneverland on both the left (high) and right(low) order sides). It will still work if you change it to:

MMDDYY MULT 10000.0001 YYMMDD

But the other options presented are probably more efficient. I once did a test on the /36 of the math technique vs the data structure method and the DS method won. Not too important for interactive stuff, but for batch against tons of data it made a big difference. Plus it's probably more understandable to someone who never read or knew about the math method ("What the @#$% is that all about?!").


* Jerry C. Adams
*IBM System i Programmer/Analyst
B&W Wholesale Distributors, Inc.* *
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Pete Helgren wrote:

What would be the most expedient way to convert a 6.0 numeric field that represents a date in MMDDYY format to a 6.0 numeric field that represents a date in YYMMDD order? The resultant numeric is used in an SQL statement comparing it to a numeric (not a date) field. The old technique of YYMMDD = MMDDYY * 10000.0001 appears not to work because the program is cranky at runtime about the result field not being large enough.

Since the compare is a numeric I figured that the math would be numeric. Or, is using a date field and converting it to a numeric host variable for the SQL the way to go?

Pete Helgren