The LA Fox Developer Newsletter

March 1996

FoxPro 2000 (Con’t from page 5)

Unrestricted Use:

cTODCChar’)

DAY({Date})

MONTH({Date})

YEAR({Date}) Always returns (CCYY] Format.

CDOW()

SYS(1), SYS(10) Julien Day. Accepts Date to 12/31/9999.

Restricted Use after 1999:

Set Century ON/OFF

? { } Format determined by (Set Century].

@ GET <Expr> PICT Picture Clause not respected by [Set Century].

? cTOD(DTOC(Date0)) [VY] depends on [Set Century]

Examples:

2.3 Date Entries:

Unless you stay with the 8 digit Date Format you end up redesigning Forms.

CurrentTransaction Dates:

They are a bit tricky since the 8 digit [MM/DD/YY] Format uses the FP Default Century.

Historical Dates : These would be outside the Default Century Range and still must be entered in the 10 digit [MM/DD/CCYY] Format to record properly, so that {01/01/1 045) records as the year 1045.

Needs to be expanded within the Function, as the results of Date Entries can be all over the Centuries. For instance, FP translates a blank [YY] to [00], thus this 4 digit Non-Date of {3/ 1/) returns 03/01/1900, but shouldn’t this return an error? Not acceptable!

Dates are stored as a complete 10 digit Date with Century

Indicator, but are displayed in 8 or 10 digit Format, according to

Century OFF or ON. This is OK by me since I can get used to

interpreting {01/01/00}as 2000, as long as everything else works

OK.

In DBF’s, the standard Date Field Size of [0-8] does not change

with Set Century, but the actual Display follows the Set Century

Rule and becomes [0-10] with Set Cent ON.

At it’s simplest, one can use GOMONTH(+1200) to add 100

Years to a Date to jump into the 21st Century, but all other quirks with the Date Functions remain invalidated.

My goal was to update my App’s with minimum effort, not spend days or weeks fighting pixel congestion. With a few exceptions, I want to stay with my existing 8 digit Data Entry Format. This requires establishing my own Default Century Indicator and bypassing Set Century ON/OFF as much as possible and let the “unrestricted” Function to most of the work.

4.0 MCDATEO Features:

MCDATEO, or use in embedded code to

return [dMemVar]

DefaultCentury :1980 to 2079

8-or 10-digit size

and

[dMemvar] as specified using the [MM/DO! CCYY] Format.

The Good News:

I have done it, and am currently Beta Testing my new Function in two APP’s. It took me longer to write this article than adapting my APP’s and you can do it too. Contact Barry Lee for free copies of YEAR2000.ZIP and MCDATE.PRG.

(Ed. Note: These programs are available by request to anyone on the LA Fox-Cast. For anyone that isn’t on an online service, please see me at the meetings to make arrangements.)

Out and About (Con’t from page 4)

dDay Fair We just recently learned that dDay Fair, sponsored by VWdBUG, will not be going on this year. But read on:

Board meeting notes LA Fox will start looking into “official” non-profit status. We are also investigating co-sponsoring and partnering a dDay-type Fair since the Valley Group seems to be losing interest in carrying on this time-honored tradition. If it happens, it’ll probably be in the September/October time frame and moved further south. Let us know if you think this idea is worthwhile. You’re not volunteering for anything <g>, you’re just letting us know how you feel. We also have two new Board members - George Porter and Michael Meer.

Memberships for those people whose dues expired in ‘95 are due this month. Please look at your last newsletter label and if the expiration date reads xx/xx/95, that means you. We’ve been trimming back our mailing list each month, beginning last January. There are currently about 30 members whose dues expired in ‘95 and if they all paid, it would infuse our treasury with about $1300. This amount roughly offsets the “running

(Con't, page 8)

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