The LA Fox Developer Newsletter

August 1999

Dates and Times (Con’t from page 7)

Text box bug

If you use the DATEO function in a text box, and if the system

date is 2000 or later, you will always see a four-digit year,

regardless of SET CENTURY. This is a bug, which appears to

be present in all versions of VFP. There is a simple workaround:

set the InputMask property to 99/99/99.

“Give us back our eleven days"

You probably know that GOMONTH() can be used to add or

subtract a number ot months to or from a date. Thus

GOMONTh((11111990},-12) etums 1/1/1980.

But try this: ~OMoNTH((12I3111752),.12.The result is an invalid

date. fact, GOMONTHO fails for any date before September

14, 1750

What is the significance of that date? There might be no

connection, but it was on September 2, 1752 that England

(along with Great Britain's American colonies) finally got around

to adopting the Gregorian, or New Style, calendar. To bring the

country into line, an 11-day correction was needed. So Septem-

ber 2 was immediately followed by September 14.

We don’t know whether this in any way explains the quirk in

GOMONTHO. But other Visual FoxPro date functions seem

unaware

date

Example

cpoer

correctly returns Thursday. But CDOW({9/2/1752}) incorrectly

returns Saturday — it was in fact a Wednesday (at least it was

in England).

Earliest date

Still in a historical mood, what do you suppose is the earliest

date that VFP can handle? Not {O/0/00}, whieh is considered to

be an empty date. What about {1/1/00)?. Pass that date to

CDOWO, for example, and you will see that it was a Monday.

But ::hink about it. {1/1/00} is not January 1st in the year zero. In

VFP 5.0 or earlier, it is the first day of 1900. Remember, two-

digit years default to l9xx. Similarly, in VFP 6.0, it is taken as

1/1/2000. whieh is a Saturday.

In fact, there never was a year zero. In both the modern

Gregorian calendar and its immediate ancestor, the Julian

calendar, 1 BC was immediately followed by 1 AD. Perhaps the

omission of a zero year was an oversight on the part of

Sosigenes, the Greek astronomer who devised the Julian

calendar. But it’s a fact. And it is at the root of the recurring

argument about whether the third millennium really starts in

2000, or in 2001 as many people assert.

Copyright Mike Lewis Consultants Ltd. 1998.

new daughter. Lauren Christine Campbell was born 8/7/99 at

2:47 p.m. weighing 6 lbs. 15 oz and 20.25 inches in length.

Healthy and happy. You can check her out at http://

www.interthing.com/baby.html

Coot Websites and Great Timewasters, If you’re ever stuck

and wondering what you r,an do to waste a little time, try these:

http://pigeons.net/softwars.htm

http://www.customsavers.com/index_wpdel.html

http://www.danworld.com

http://www.urban75.com/Mag/useless.html

http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/

http://www.mightycool.com/

For those of you who have always wanted to add interesting

WAV files to your apps, try:

http://www.ce.net/users/jones/wavs.html

http://www.cybermonkeysworld.com/wavs/wavs.html

http://soundamenca.com

Well, that’s about all for now.

It Can’t Get Any Easier....

We’ve come up with an easy way to submit articles to the LA

Fox Developer Newsletter one that has been overlooked for

a long time.

You can submit your articles to Barry Lee at CIS# 72723,3422

on Compuserve, or brlee@earthlinknet.

These articles can be on any FoxPro-related topic, whether it

concerns a new technique you’ve discovered, a certain develop-

ment technique you may favor over others, book reviews, etc.

Editor reserves the right to edit or offer constructive comments

concerning submitted articles and accepted articles shall be

considered to be in the public domain.

The quality of this newsletter really depends on the members

that support it, not just read it. And I think we’d all be surprised

by the useful information that could be circulated around the

membership.

So

How ‘bout it?

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