CODEWITHSUNDEEP
formattingcoboldate-formatting
Felix Reyes
Felix Reyes

Reputation: 19

What date/time format is this? COBOL Output

I seem to have an issue figuring out what date format a program in COBOL is storing data in.

DATE_SCHD
A80911
A80911
B00324
A51021
A51028
A60518
B50204
B50204
B50204
B50204
B50206
B50202
B50206
B50210

Any clues?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 573

Answers (1)

Richard Schwartz
Richard Schwartz

Reputation: 14628

If this is code that predates Y2K, then it is likely that it was storing in YYMMDD format and rather than being expanded from 6 to 8 bytes it was adapted to express the YY as a hex-like extension of 20th century two digit years. That still leaves two possibilities though. If both digits are interpreted as hex, then A5 = 2005, A6 = 2006, A8 = 2008, B5 = 2021, etc. But if only the first digit is interpreted as hex, then B5 = 2015.

You'll need to examine the code that manipulates these dates, or at least try feeding it some new test data, in order to figure it out for sure.

Upvotes: 3

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