Getting a Date in An integer format

ravikiran2712 · Post by **ravikiran2712** » Fri Oct 14, 2005 9:40 am

Hi all,
i have to write a date in an integer format. can anyone please help me out.
Thanks,
Ravi

chulett · Post by **chulett** » Fri Oct 14, 2005 9:42 am

Define exactly what you mean by 'integer' format so that people don't spend time on the 'wrong' solution.

ravikiran2712 · Post by **ravikiran2712** » Fri Oct 14, 2005 9:43 am

Hi Craig,
I have to get the date in the integer(10) field. i think with OCONV we can have in string format.
Ravi

chulett · Post by **chulett** » Fri Oct 14, 2005 10:03 am

Actually, was looking for a little more detail than that. Examples of input and output formats are always good.

If what you mean is that you need to strip formatting characters from the date, look at - in no particular order - the Trim and EReplace functions. The latter can be used to replace a character with 'nothing', in effect removing it from the target field.

More details will yield more targetted advice.

I_Server_Whale · Post by **I_Server_Whale** » Fri Oct 14, 2005 11:20 am

Try this !

Code: Select all




TRIM((OCONV(ICONV(DSLink.InDate,"DYMD[2,2,2]"), "DYMD[4,2,2]")), " ", "A")

Modify the format according to your requirements.

LET ME KNOW IF IT WORKED.

Thanks,

Naveen.

ravikiran2712 · Post by **ravikiran2712** » Fri Oct 14, 2005 11:49 am

Naveen,
It worked.
Thanks,
Ravi

kcbland · Post by **kcbland** » Fri Oct 14, 2005 12:04 pm

What Craig was asking is to define what the integer format should look like. Should it be YYYYMMDD, or MMDDYYYY, padding with zeroes, what? Should it be the integer number of days since a given start date, what does integer(10) mean? That's not a common term for describing a date without delimiters.

chulett · Post by **chulett** » Fri Oct 14, 2005 1:40 pm

Exactly. Glad "it worked", however.

ray.wurlod · Post by **ray.wurlod** » Fri Oct 14, 2005 6:48 pm

If the input date is already in YYYY-MM-DD then the solution given is non-optimal. All you need to do to get YYYYMMDD is to strip out the "-" characters. Some possible solutions are:

Trim(inLink.TheDate, "-", "A")

Convert("-", "", inLink.TheDate)

Oconv(inLink.TheDate, "MCN")

inLink.TheDate[1,4] : inLink.TheDate[6,2] : inLink.TheDate[9,2]

I leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine which of these is the most efficient, and which will not necessarily yield the correct answer.