Jeff mentioned an atomic(ity) trapdoor in...

>> SETVAR DATE,"!HPMONTH/!HPDATE/!HPYEAR"

and suggested an upcoming solution for 6.0 users...

>Or, in 6.0 Express 1, you will be able to reference the new HPYYYYMMDD
>variable and be guaranteed the all parts of the year-month-date are
>consistent.

For the short term you might also pick up a small utility that
returns YYYYMMDDHHMMSS to a CI var, so you can easily substring
whatever portion you need (watch out to have your TZ setting ok,
as it uses COBOL's $CONTROL POST85 FUNCTION CURRENT-DATE). Find
it on Jazz where Glenn Koster's MYSECOND contribution lives.

:) Lars