One thing I still don't understand about this 9-9-99 thing, is that in my
25 years (April 22nd, 1974 - 1st day of work!)
of programming experience, I have never seen 9-9-99 stored as 9999, so even
if the software DID use
that as some sort of final date, wouldn't Sept 9th be stored as zero nine,
zero nine, ninety nine?
Or even more likely, stored in YMD format as ninety nine, zero nine, zero
nine?

090999 or 990909 but never 9999.    We have to store the zeroes in order to
maintain the correct position.
And yes, I have used 99 99 99 as a terminator, especially in the olden days
of reading card input and
matching it to a master file.   Anytime I was doing a merge of two or more
files, one could put all nines, or
high values into the file that ran out of records.

The same is true of the Julian version, that we have now went past, and I
haven't heard of any problems with
99099 (which was also stated as being a "9999" date).

Paul D. Christensen
PC Enterprises Inc.
Osakis Mn