Re:
> Thanks Greg; this works but why?
> 
> My two var's should have worked as well; I'm stumped!

My guess:  while doing calculations/expressions, MPEX keeps
more information about the type of a value ... so it 
knows that "datebuild(70,01,01)" has produced a "string"
of subtype "date".  When you do "date - date", it says
to itself: hmm...I know they're both dates, and does
a date difference calculation on them.

But, when you do "setvar d1 datebuild (70, 01, 01)", the
result is a "string" only.  Later, you're trying to do !d1-!d2,
it no longer knows that either one is a date and tries to parse both of
them ... and even when it manages to parse them "correctly", I'm not
sure it's "correct".

MPEX seems to have some difficulty handling dates entered as text:

% calc 06/08/01-06/07/04
-1095, $FFFFFBB9, %37777775671, #65535/#64441, "...."

% calc datebuild(6,8,1)-datebuild(6,7,4)
28, $1C, %34, "...."

and, my favorite:

%calc 1/2/3
03/01/02

Stan
-- 
Stan Sieler
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