I have a date string in an amper variable, &RPT_DATE = ’25 MAR, 2017’;.
I am searching for my book, (Almost) 1001 Ways to Work with Dates (and the life of a consultant amounts to searching through boxes for your reference materials).

Is this string ’25 MAR, 2017’ represented in one of the various formats described in this book? I’d like to convert it using CHGDAT to use in a report heading.

Thank you

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

Tom,
You don't say in what format you want the date to appear.
I'll assume that you want 25/03/2017.
I'm afraid CHGDAT will not accept the string ’25 MAR, 2017’.
But you can go via DEFINE.
SOLUTION 1:

  
-SET &RPT='25 MAR, 2017';
DEFINE FILE CAR
MYD/DMYY WITH COUNTRY='&RPT';
END
TABLE FILE CAR
BY MYD AS ''
ON TABLE SET PAGE OFF
ON TABLE SET HOLDLIST PRINTONLY
ON TABLE HOLD FORMAT ALPHA
END
-RUN
-READ HOLD,&MYD
-SET &MYD=EDIT(&MYD,'99/99/9999');
-TYPE &MYD

SOLUTION 2:

  
-SET &RPT='25 MAR, 2017';
DEFINE FILE CAR
MYD/DMYY WITH COUNTRY='&RPT';
END
TABLE FILE CAR
BY MYD AS ''
ON TABLE SET PAGE OFF
ON TABLE SET HOLDLIST PRINTONLY
ON TABLE HOLD FORMAT WP
END
-RUN
-READ HOLD,&1
-READ HOLD,&MYD
-RUN
-TYPE &MYD

Thank you Danny.