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Need addl date formats

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    Need addl date formats

    I'm in the process of converting an A4 application to A5 version 4.5. In the A4 system I have two date fields where only the month and day are significant.

    The dates define the start and end of a season and are used to switch the mailing address depending on the current date when labels are printed. Date format fields are used so date arithmetic and implied editing features can be used. In A4 the display width in limited to 5 characters and everything is fine.

    In the A5 world the display width of a date field object has no impact on the display of the date field on the input form regardless of the format used. I would like to see mm/dd formats such as 12-31 and 12/31 available. For other cultures there might be variations of dd/mm required. Another option if fix it so that the display width property item really works on a date.

    As described above it is desirable to use the date field type for the arithmetic and editing available.

    #2
    RE: Need addl date formats

    Paul:

    If the year is not relevant, then perhaps you are not in fact storing a date. If so, why not use a character field with a mask defined in field rules. This would give you complete control of the display properties of an empty field.

    You could still order the field and you could easily strip away mask characters if need be by using remspecial. Since 12-15 comes after 11-15 arranging things in order would be unproblematic and if you wanted to disply 15-11 and 15-12 you could do a transform very easily to order the days (not dates) as you wish.

    No?

    Bill
    Bill Hanigsberg

    Comment


      #3
      RE: Need addl date formats

      Paul,

      I'm not sure this would help in your case, but you can display the first 5 characters of a date using:

      substr(dtoc(thedate),1,5)

      Comment


        #4
        RE: Need addl date formats

        Hi Ohlen,

        I *think* he wants to see only part of the date (ie. no year) during data entry. But then, I think he would receive an invalid date error since there would be no year.

        I think if there is no year it ain't no date.

        Bill
        Bill Hanigsberg

        Comment


          #5
          RE: Need addl date formats

          While the format width should work for a date field, since it doesn't, changing it to a character field with appropriate validation should be fine.

          Anyplace you need to use it in a calculation could be as easily done as the example below.

          chardatefield="12/15"
          datevalue=ctod(chardatefield+"/"+cyear)

          Regards,

          Ira J. Perlow
          Computer Systems Design & Associates
          [email protected]
          Regards,

          Ira J. Perlow
          Computer Systems Design


          CSDA A5 Products
          New - Free CSDA DiagInfo - v1.39, 30 Apr 2013
          CSDA Barcode Functions

          CSDA Code Utility
          CSDA Screen Capture


          Comment


            #6
            RE: Need addl date formats

            I think you need to add a "date()" to the cyear command in order to get the current year:
            datevalue=ctod(chardatefield+"/"+cyear(date())

            Comment


              #7
              RE: Need addl date formats

              Sorry, I left out a parenthesis:


              datevalue=ctod(chardatefield+"/"+cyear(date()))

              Comment


                #8
                RE: Need addl date formats

                Cal,

                Thanks for watching my back. That's what I get for rushing an answer.

                --Ira
                Regards,

                Ira J. Perlow
                Computer Systems Design


                CSDA A5 Products
                New - Free CSDA DiagInfo - v1.39, 30 Apr 2013
                CSDA Barcode Functions

                CSDA Code Utility
                CSDA Screen Capture


                Comment


                  #9
                  RE: Need addl date formats

                  Thanks to all for the feedback.

                  I use the date format on the input form due to the implied editing and arithmetic operations of a date field. The year is ignored. While I'm typing this I guess my solution would really be to narrow the object on the input form so that year won't show.

                  It works fine in A4. Alpha should fix it in A5 or gray out the width on a date field object!

                  Comment

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