Re: Date Validation

On 30 May 2012 05:50, Jeff Young wrote:

I have an application that needs to validate and convert a date from
an external system.
The format of the date can be m/d/ccyy,mm/d/ccyy,m/dd/ccyy,mm/dd/ccyy
with the "/" included.
The converted format needs to be a numeric field in the format
ccyymmdd.

I have the following code in my program:
<snip>

// Edit Start Date
Monitor;
EpHOrDate = %Dec(%Date(Start_Date : *USA));
<<SNIP>>

Using the values above, I set Date_In in DEBUG prior to the Monitor
to each of the dates.
BOTH of the dates were flagged as errors.

A. What am I doing wrong?
B. How can I handle the different date formats for editing and
conversion?

The client is on V6R1M1

SQL understands those date formats as valid DATE representations even though the RPG does not. Other date features, e.g. CEE APIs, probably handle them fine as well. An SQL expression to assign a 10P00 value from the date string:

Exec SQL
set :EpHOrDate /* test SQLCODE and\or SQLSTATE for errors */
= dec(replace(char(date(:Start_Date),ISO),'-',''), 10) ;


For reference, this same topic was discussed back in March:
# Subject: Date conversion from m/d/ccyy format
# Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2012 09:30:24 -0400
http://archive.midrange.com/rpg400-l/201203/threads.html#00257
http://archive.midrange.com/rpg400-l/201203/msg00316.html
"...
RPG officially requires that the month and day each have two digits, with leading zeros if necessary. ... massage the character value so that it was in mm/dd/yyyy form, and then use %DATE.
... _untested code example was given_ ...
"
http://archive.midrange.com/rpg400-l/201203/msg00323.html
"...
_String representations of datetime values_
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/iseries/v5r4/topic/db2/rbafzmstch2data.htm#dtstrng
'Leading zeros can be omitted from the month and day portions when using the IBM® SQL standard formats. Each IBM SQL standard format is identified by name and includes an associated abbreviation (for use by the CHAR function).'
"

Regards, Chuck