I want to use a defined field as part of the AS part so I can dynmically add the date to the column heading.
Is it possible to do something like this?

define file car
mydate/yymd = &today;
end

table file car
print car AS '< mydate'

(note: Using this method literally prints < mydate in the column heading)

edit: for html <

This message has been edited. Last edited by: thebrettd,

IS &today, a value passed to the program?

I've used parameters in my headings such as

CAR AS '&today,name'

sometimes it works better if you put a blank space after the &var in a header or col title, lets focus know the &var isn't called &var,
CAR AS '&today '
or
CAR AS '&today , yadayada'

Ah sorry, should have been a little more careful with my original post.
I want to extract specific parts of the date like so:

define file car
TODAY/YYMD = &YYMD;
ENDYR/YY = TODAY;
end

table file car
print car AS 'effective through < ENDYR'

Do any date calculations needed for column headings in Dialog Manager, not defines. Then you can use the resulting amper-variable in the column title, as Leah mentioned. You can not use fields in the column-titles. If you want today's date in a different format, ie just the year, you can find a version of the system date that shows it (ie &DATEYY).

 
PRINT CAR AS 'Effective thru &DATEYY'

 

quote:

Originally posted by N.Selph:
Do any date calculations needed for column headings in Dialog Manager, not defines. Then you can use the resulting amper-variable in the column title, as Leah mentioned. You can not use fields in the column-titles. If you want today's date in a different format, ie just the year, you can find a version of the system date that shows it (ie &DATEYY).

 
PRINT CAR AS 'Effective thru &DATEYY'

 

Ah, ok. That is the feeling I was getting after finagling with it for a while.

I don't think you can use field names/values in the AS phrase. What you would want here is just Dialogue Manager stuff:

-SET &ENDYR=CHGDAT('YYMD','YY',&YYMD, 'YY');

If you need it to be dependent on data, you could use DEFINEs to group into individual years and use the correctly calculated values from your -SET commands.
YEAR1/D12.2=IF YEAR EQ '&ENDYR1' THEN FIELDNAME ELSE 0;
YEAR2/D12.2=IF YEAR EQ '&ENDYR2' THEN FIELDNAME ELSE 0;

and so on. Then
PRINT
YEAR1 AS '&ENDYR1'
YEAR2 AS '&ENDYR2'

Oh Darin. You rock.
(had to change your code slightly to get it to run, it was complaining about the last parameter to the function)

-SET &ENDYR=CHGDAT('YYMD','YY',&YYMD, 'A4');
-SET &NOWYR=CHGDAT('YYMD','MT',&YYMD,'A3');

Thats the ticket.

Yup - sorry ' bout missing that. DM wouldn't know what a date is, but it does know what alpha is. Rather than use CHGDAT, it would be easier just to set equal to &DATEYY, &DATEMT (1001 WAYS TO GET A DATE OUT OF WEBFOCUS!!)