Re: 9/9/99

[Jim Langston <jlangston@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

And, as for it being seen as 99/99/99, on another discussion forum
(http://www.midrangecomputing.com) this was a topic, and I had stated
the same question, why would they use 9/9/99 (090999) instead of 99/99/99
and the reply was, it had to be a valid date for date checking.  There are
a lot of programs that would bomb out on 99/99/99 as an invalid date.

To get around this, it was stated, they made it the valid date of 9/9/99 
numerically

as 090999.

Regards,

Jim Langston

Jon.Paris@halinfo.it wrote:

>  >> From all the discussion I've heard on it, that was a common practice in
> COBOL programs as COBOL has no real EOF function (or didn't anyway).
>
> I don't recall any point in history when COBOL did not have an AT END option
> (i.e. EOF).  On some systems I have worked with placing a high value (all 9s) 
>in
> a dummy record at the end of file was done to allow you to position to
> (effective) EOF and read backwards - or is this what you meant by EOF 
>function ?
>
> Either way, it would never finish up as 09/09/99 it would have been 99/99/99.
>
> +---
> | This is the Midrange System Mailing List!
> | To submit a new message, send your mail to MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com.
> | To subscribe to this list send email to MIDRANGE-L-SUB@midrange.com.
> | To unsubscribe from this list send email to MIDRANGE-L-UNSUB@midrange.com.
> | Questions should be directed to the list owner/operator: david@midrange.com
> +---

+---
| This is the Midrange System Mailing List!
| To submit a new message, send your mail to MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com.
| To subscribe to this list send email to MIDRANGE-L-SUB@midrange.com.
| To unsubscribe from this list send email to MIDRANGE-L-UNSUB@midrange.com.
| Questions should be directed to the list owner/operator: david@midrange.com
+---