Date Templates

The default date template in the US is MM/DD/YYYY. If you are in a different culture and you have used MODE COUNTRY in either a CONFIG file or in your APPLICATION procedure to establish that fact, then the default date form will be in your country's standard form. This is true everywhere in our documentation where we assert that the default date form is MM/DD/YYYY. In the following discussion we are going to assume the US default and you can make any transliterations yourself.

In every command where a date fieldname is used (that is, a fieldname defined in the data base as a DATE data type) a template can follow it. The template, when used as a format override, is always enclosed in quotes and surrounded by parenthesis, e.g., ("YYYYMMDD").

Depending on the command you are either specifying the form of the date in the field so we input it or interpret it correctly, or you are specifying how you want the date delivered to your Procedure or Report.

If all of your dates are always in the default form you never need to use the template.

Template Definitions

We begin with the following template character definitions:

                                M - Numeric Month
                                X - Alpha Month
                                D - Numeric Day
                                Z - Alpha Day
                                Y - Year
                                L - Last Day of Month

For purposes of discussion lets pick the date as September 2, 1938 (guess who's birthday that is). We will use that date in all of the examples below.

The template MM/DD/YYYY specifies the date form as 09/02/1938 but you don't need that one, as it is the default.

                YYYYMMDD                       specifies the form 19380902
                YYYY.MM.DD                     specifies the form 1938.09.02
                YYYY/MM/DD                     specifies the form 1938/09/02
                YYYY-MM-DD                     specifies the form 1938-09-02
                DD/MM/YY                          is 02/09/38 but you should not use two-character years
                YYMMDD                             specifies 380902 but you should not be using two-char years
                XXX DD, YYYY                   specifies Sep 02, 1938
                ZZZ XX DD                          specifies FRI SEP 02
                ZZZZZZZZZ XXXXXXXXX DD, YYYY specifies Friday September 02, 1938
                DD                                          specifies 02
                ZZZZZZZZZ                        specifies Friday (use 9 chars to get longest day spelling)
                XXXXXXXXX                     specifies September (9 chars to get longest month spelling)
                YYYY                                     specifies 1938
                MM/LL/YYYY                      specifies 09/30/1938 (last day of month)
                Z                                             specifies F
                Y                                             specifies 8

You probably have the picture by now. For information about converting Julian dates to calendar dates see the SET command description.