Comparing dates

[devidotcom]

I have to compare two dates. My source fields are varchar(10) columns.
e.g. in the format 2003-12-10

I order to compare I plan to change the format to YYYYMMDD format. How do I remove '-' in them?
Is it that after removing them I need to convert these varchar field to decimal using StringToDecimal function. So that I can use greater than or less than operations.

[Maveric]

Don't have to convert it to Decimal. Convert the varchar to date using StringtoDate and compare them directly.

[devidotcom]

So I just use the StringToDate function for both the input columns and compare using the following expression

svDate1=StringToDate(input.Date11)
svDate2=StringToDate(input.Date22)
svComp=svDate1>svDate2

where svDate1, svDate2 are date datatype
Is this right?

[chulett]

Don't need to be converted at all, they will compare fine (dashes and all) as long as month and day are always two digits.

[Maveric]

I did not know that a direct compare will work. As craig suggested make sure the date and month fields are always 2 characters and do a direct compare. As it is for StringtoDate to work you will have to make sure that the length of the data is 10 characters. So

If len(input.date11) = 10 and len(input.date22) = 10 then compare logic else ().

You would have to take care of the else condition though if the lengths are not 10.

[devidotcom]

Hi All,

Thanks it works fine now. I converted them to dates and compared using greater than or lesser than signs.

Thanks