DSXchange

Is there some reason for the inconsistency in the way DS handles invalid dates?

For Example, a day value that exceeds the normal range for that month returns null, but if it happens to be February 29th in a non-leap year, it returns the first of the next month.

This means there is no way to capture invalid dates by looking for null output. Is there a way to get around this?

Thanks.

Returns null from what? How are you doing your date handling / checking? Read the online help for the Status() function, it comes in very handy for date handling inside a routine and the example there is specific to date validation, from what I recall.

The trick is to ICONV a date, then OCONV the date and verify that the same month comes back.

For fun, try 2-28, 2-29, 2-30, and 2-31. See what happens. Fun with dates!!!

Gsherry1,

The OCONV/ICONV functions all return a status code. When a date could be correct and a rule can be followed, the conversion is done and a warning STATUS is returned {which is of course ignored in derivations}; while an invalid date isn't converted and an error STATUS is set {once again, unused and ignored in mere derivations?}.

In order to change this behaviour you need to put the conversion into a routine and handle the potential warnings and errors yourself.

So the date conversions are not really inconsistent, we just don't normally use the full functionality.

Thanks. The status function came in handy here. I needed to distinguish status=1 and status=3.