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Year calc

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    Year calc

    My next chore is to extract the last two digits of the date and combine them with the julian date. User inputs date 12/25/2005 and result is:
    05359 -- where 05 = year YY and 359 = day of year.

    I can figure the day of the year as JDATE() - JDATE(Date()). (at least I think that will give me 359 if date = 12/25/2005.

    How do I pick the "05" from the year YYYY?

    Also, when working with numeric fields, is it required to use any of the trim commands to remove either leading or trailing characters as it is required with text fields?

    Thank you.

    #2
    Your initial hypothesis is wrong.

    Jdate() - jdate(date()) will always return zero since the date() function returns the current date, not the first day of the year, and the default for Jdate() is the julian equivalent of the current date.

    Substr(dtos(Your_date_field),3,2) or Substr(cyear(Your_date_field),3,2) will return the character string containing the last two digits of the YYYY of a valid date.

    The help file shows how to determine the day of the year using Jdate().

    Putting them together you wind up with this strange thing:

    Code:
    substr(dtos(your_date_field),3,2)+ltrim(str(jdate(Your_date_field)-jdate(ctod("01/01/"+cyear(your_date_field)))))
    -- tom

    Comment


      #3
      The expression I presented results in a character string which concatenates the two digit year with the number of days since January 1st of the same year. For January 2, 2006 it results in 061, since there the 2nd is one day after the first.

      If you want the "day of the year" instead of the number of days since January 1st, you either have to add 1 or count from December 31 of the previous year. Using the former approach here's how the expressioin would change:

      Code:
      substr(dtos(your_date_field),3,2)+ltrim(str(jdate(Your_date_field [COLOR="Red"]+ 1[/COLOR])-jdate(ctod("01/01/"+cyear(your_date_field)))))
      Using this on January 2, 2006 you get 062.

      Comment


        #4
        Man is that ever a mouthful................
        When I combine that with the rest of the "if" stmt, it'll be huge. I hope Alpha doesn't have a 255 character limit here.

        Thanks.

        Comment


          #5
          You're welcome.

          The expression could be shortened if you didn't use the julian functions. In alpha five you can subtract one date from another directly. I used the Julian functions simply to show how they could be used if one wanted to.

          Code:
          substr(dtos(your_date_field),3,2) + ltrim(str(your_date_field + 1 - ctod("01/01/"+cyear(your_date_field))))

          Comment


            #6
            Tom

            Am curious. I see in your answer that you used "ltrim". Why not use "alltrim"?

            I ask because I've noticed that with just about any text, one needs to employ a "trim" function.

            Do I assume correctly that "trim" function is not required with numbers. Only the actual characters are stored and not the characters plus unused field length?

            Alpha V is the first DB, I've run across that still requires one to make such extensive use of the "trim" functions. Any reason why the design hasn't changed to eliminate this awkward requirement??

            Thanks.

            Comment


              #7
              Fletch,

              You do not have to trim leading (or trailing) blanks from numeric data types. However, once converted to character string equivalents trimming is often required. Check the docs for information on the STR() function I used, and you'll see why I used Ltrim().

              Alpha's tables use FoxPro 2.6 data format rules. Character and numeric data types are stored in fixed width fields in the DBF. This is accomplished by padding character strings on the right with trailing blanks. And for numerics, padding them with blanks on the left. However, as I said before, Alpha handles the trimming of blanks for numeric data types automatically.

              -- tom

              Comment


                #8
                Tom

                This is numeric field and your formula is telling me it's a character result. Can't save to a numeric field

                Comment


                  #9
                  Fletch,

                  Your first post said you were looking for a result like this:

                  05359

                  Such a thing can only be a character string. The numeric equivalent will always be 5359. Therefore I concluded you were working with character type data.

                  Modify the expression to use the val() function to convert string to numeric, if you really want to use numeric. Personally I think this is apt to cause confusion. If numeric, does 5359 represent the 59th day of the year 2053, or the 359th day of year 2005? Using the numeric value one can't tell.

                  -- tom
                  Last edited by Tom Cone Jr; 01-02-2006, 09:03 PM.

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