Talk:Date Data Type

From CometWiki

Posted by Grant Foraker on September 14, 2009 at 14:43:13:

Adding a Date data type to Comet has been discussed at several past Dealer/Developer meetings. So, as a baby step, can we add a "D" field type to #CFILES.
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Right now the majority of dates in my files are either "YYYYMMDD" or "MM/DD/YYYY". The "YYYYMMDD" ones for date sorting (in keys mostly) and the "MM/DD/YYYY" ones for display.
The Date Serial Number is another possible option.
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So, in the Reporter
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SELECTING IF TRANS.DATE EQ "%FromDate%"
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would prompt a Date Picker because TRANS.DATE was a "D" instead of a "S" field.

Posted by Jon Sacks on September 15, 2009 at 06:28:44:

In Reply to: Date data type posted by Grant Foraker on September 14, 2009 at 14:43:13:
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All dates should be stored in the system as serial date/time and the mask applied indicates the way it should be displayed.

Posted by Steve Auerbach on September 15, 2009 at 07:41:34:

 In Reply to: Re: Date data type posted by Jon Sacks on September 15, 2009 at 06:28:44:
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Jon, of course, is right. Dates should be stored as serial date/time. Sadly the Q machine did not know about such sophistication. 
#CFILES has this legacy thing to deal with.
And, of course, I agree with Grant BUT we need more than a D type. We need type codes like those so mnemonically defined for DATE2NUM.
Easy to remember; flows trippingly from the tongue. Sadly we need more than one date code.

Posted by Jim Guerber on September 15, 2009 at 11:04:38:

In Reply to: Re: Date data type posted by Steve Auerbach on September 15, 2009 at 07:41:34:
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Of course you are all right. I totally agree that Comet should know about dates.
That is why we introduced the comet Julian date feature in the date2num() functions etc.
The thing we lack is some sort of syntax that the program could use to tell Comet what to do.
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I suggest you start a wiki page that could describe such a syntax.
Once the syntax is nailed down, we could start to build something.
As a start, look at the windows way of dealing with dates. Don't forget time as well.