🚀 go-pugleaf

On Fri, 05 Mar 1999 21:30:21 GMT, skoterski@NOSPAMinprise.com (Steve
Koterski) wrote:

>On Thu, 4 Mar 1999 10:24:06 +0100, teamb@opto-pps.com (Romain Strieff
>[TeamB]) wrote:
>
>[...]
>
>>But only if you use the slash as separator, if you use the dot, it works. 
>>It seems to think it's US dates only when it sees the "/"

Okay. So here is the rewrite of the date topic for the online help. Does
this appear to explain the situation to everyone's satisfaction?

Date formats
============

There are two acceptable formats for the date parts of DATE and TIMESTAMP
literals in local SQL statements: the US date format and the European date
format. Which one of the two you use is predicated on the Windows
configuration settings for Date Separator and Short Date Style. If the Date
Separator is a slash (/) and Short Date Style puts the month before the day
(such as MM-dd-yy), the date must be in a US date format, MM/DD/YY or
MM/DD/YYYY. If the Date Separator is a period (.) and Short Date Style puts
the day before the month (such as dd.MM.yy), the date must be in a European
date format, DD.MM.YY or DD.MM.YYYY. A combination of Short Date Style of
month before day and a Date Separator of anything but a period is not
supported in local SQL. DATE and TIMESTAMP values passed to an SQL
statement via parameters and the values in columns are unaffected by these
restrictions on format. Only literal values are affected.
To prevent date literals from being mistaken by the SQL parser for
arithmetic calculations, enclose them in quotation marks. This keeps
1/23/1998 from being mistaken for 1 divided by 23 divided by 1998.

Example of a date literal in a US format:

  SELECT *
  FROM orders
  WHERE (saledate <= "1/23/1998")

Example of the same date literal in a European format:

  SELECT *
  FROM orders
  WHERE (saledate <= "23.1.1998")

Leading zeros for the month and day fields are optional.

If the century is not specified for the year in a date value, the BDE
settings FOURDIGITYEAR and YEARBIASED control the century of the date.

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Steve Koterski                    "My problem lies in reconciling my gross
Technical Publications            habits with my net income."
INPRISE Corporation                             -- Errol Flynn (1909-1959)
http://www.borland.com/delphi