Converts a single character string, a set of month, day, and year values, an integer expression, a DATETIME expression, or a DATETIME-TZ expression into a DATE value.

If the DATE function cannot produce a valid date given the specified argument(s), it returns a run-time error.

Syntax

DATE ( month , day , year )
 
DATE ( string )
 
DATE ( integer-expression )
 
DATE ( datetime-expression )
month
A constant, field name, variable name, or expression whose value is an integer from 1 to 12, inclusive.
day
An expression whose value is an integer from 1 to the highest valid day of the month.
year
An expression whose value is the year (for example, 1994).
string

A character string containing a date value to convert into a DATE data type. The string value must have the format specified by the Date Format (-d) startup parameter (the default is mdy). Note that -d sets the display format, not the date storage format, which is fixed. Furthermore, date constants entered in procedures, or as initial values in the Data Dictionary, are always specified in month/day/year format.

You do not have to specify separator characters for the month, day, and year components of the date string; however, slashes(/), periods(.), and hyphens(-) are accepted as separator characters.

integer-expression

An expression that evaluates to a signed integer value that represents the number of days since the origin of the ABL date data type. Usually this integer is obtained from a previous operation where the date was converted to an integer using the INTEGER(ABL-date) or INT64(ABL-date) function.

The value of the expression cannot be a date value before 12/31/-32768 or after 12/31/32767.

Note: The resulting date from the DATE(integer-expression) function is guaranteed to be a valid ABL date only if the integer-expression originated from the INTEGER(ABL-date) or INT64(ABL-date) function.
datetime-expression

An expression that evaluates to a DATETIME or DATETIME-TZ. The DATE function returns the date portion of the datetime-expression as a DATE.

If datetime-expression is a DATETIME-TZ, the DATE function returns the date relative to the time zone of the DATETIME-TZ value. For example, a DATETIME-TZ field, fdt, is created in London (time zone UTC+00:00) with a value of May 5, 2002 at 7:15:03.002 am. DATE (fdt) returns 05/05/2002, regardless of the session's time zone.

Examples

This procedure reads data from an input file that contains date information from another system stored as character strings without slashes or dashes between month, day, and year. It tries to convert these dates to ABL dates. Some formats cannot be successfully converted. For example:

r-date.p 

/* r-date.p */
DEFINE VARIABLE cnum  AS CHARACTER NO-UNDO FORMAT "x(3)".
DEFINE VARIABLE cdate AS CHARACTER NO-UNDO FORMAT "x(16)".
DEFINE VARIABLE iday  AS INTEGER   NO-UNDO.
DEFINE VARIABLE imon  AS INTEGER   NO-UNDO.
DEFINE VARIABLE iyr   AS INTEGER   NO-UNDO.
DEFINE VARIABLE ddate AS DATE      NO-UNDO.

INPUT FROM VALUE(SEARCH("r-date.dat")).
REPEAT:
  SET cnum cdate.
  ASSIGN
    imon  = INTEGER(SUBSTR(cdate,1,2))
    iday  = INTEGER(SUBSTR(cdate,4,2))
    iyr   = INTEGER(SUBSTR(cdate,7,2))
    /* Works for years within 50 of 2000 */
    iyr   = iyr + (IF (iyr < 50) THEN 2000 ELSE 1900)
    ddate = DATE(imon,iday,iyr).  

  DISPLAY ddate.
END.
INPUT CLOSE.

The following example shows the DATE (string) syntax:

r-date2.p 

/* r-date2.p */
DEFINE VARIABLE cnum  AS CHARACTER NO-UNDO FORMAT "x(3)".
DEFINE VARIABLE cdate AS CHARACTER NO-UNDO FORMAT "x(16)".
DEFINE VARIABLE ddate AS DATE      NO-UNDO FORMAT "99/99/9999".

INPUT FROM VALUE(SEARCH("r-date.dat")).
REPEAT:
  SET cnum cdate.
  ddate = DATE(cdate).  
  DISPLAY ddate.
END.
INPUT CLOSE.

This example produces the following output. It produces no date for the first example since spaces are not a valid date separator:

cnum  cdate            ddate     
----  ---------------- ----------

 nyd  01 01 86         
 ad   11-28-52         11/28/1952
 red  12/08/56         12/08/1956
 nsm  10.01.01         10/01/2001
 hrl  1/8/1994         10/08/1994

See also

ADD-INTERVAL function, DATE-FORMAT attribute, DATETIME function, DATETIME-TZ function, DAY function, ETIME function, INTERVAL function, ISO-DATE function, MONTH function, MTIME function, NOW function, TIME function, TIMEZONE function, TODAY function, WEEKDAY function, YEAR function, YEAR-OFFSET attribute