Date comparison

arunmozhicholan · New User Joined: 07 Feb 2007 Posts: 27 Location: chennai

Hi ,

I need to compare the two dates of the given input files but the date format is DDMMMYYYY , so is there any way to convert MMM to numeric

Example
21MAR2012 - 21032012

dbzTHEdinosauer · Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2012 3:54 pm

since a date in the format of day/mo/year can only be compared as equal or not equal,

you are sorta wasting your time.

don't you really want to compare year/mo/da?

and since there are only 12 months,
either use a 'built by you' lookup cobol internal table
or use a 12 step EVALUATE.

why would you want to call a service to provide you potentially 12 returns?

arunmozhicholan · New User Joined: 07 Feb 2007 Posts: 27 Location: chennai

Thanks ,

I can use Evaluate to get the results .

Bill Woodger · Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2012 4:20 pm

A fun way to do it is to always design so you have a usable date on the files (yyyymmdd or yyyyddd) and then do necessary manipulation for "other" purposes. Can always sort, always compare.

Akatsukami · Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2012 8:21 pm

Use the Language Environment CEEDAYS function to get Lilian day number, and then use it as you see fit.

Bill O'Boyle · Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2012 11:21 pm

Akatsukami's suggestion is a much better way to go.

If you haven't validated the date beforehand, COBOL DATE FUNCTION's will crash and burn if a bad-date is passed.

LE Callable Service routines will return X'0000' or non-X'0000' in the first 2-Bytes of the Feedback code, to signify a valid or invalid date, respectively.

What if you had a February 29 day and it wasn't a valid leap year and you're using FUNCTION's?

You never get used to those O'Dark Thirty phone calls and in this case, they're preventable....