Paul Christensen <[log in to unmask]> wrote:


<snip>


>The story is that April 9th 1999 and September 9th 1999 are two possible
>dates for problems.
>The reasoning is that both dates (one Julian and one Gregorian format)
>cause a date of 9999,
>which many programmers may have used to signify end-of-file.
>


...

>But to me, all 9's would mean six 9's (999999), or 5 9's in the case of
>Julian dates; but never four nines.   And besides, who stores dates without
>the leading zeroes?
>   9/9/99 would be stored as either zero nine, zero nine, ninety nine or in
>YMD format of 990909.      September 9th does not get stored as 9999 in any
>computer system that I know of.


It is really a data entry and data interpretation issue, not a data storage
problem. Often users would key in 12/31/99 or 9/9/99 to indicate data that
never expires. Entering all 9s is somewhat faster for heads down data entry
than 12/31/99 is. Anyone who is checking for Y2K compliance must decide how
to deal with these types of special dates so the software knows whether to
treat them as real dates or "high-values" dates.

I have no idea where April 9 fits, though, except in a system that accepts
date fields from the user in a variation of YYDDD format.

I was listening to a radio show last night where the host was suggesting
that the companies he owns do nothing at all about Y2K except to back up all
of their data in late December, 1999 and lock it in a drawer. If the Y2K
problems hit they can go back to that backup because it will never have been
loaded on a computer that saw a Y2K date so the data will be OK. He left you
with the impression that Y2K was a virus that was only going to hit a small
amount of the population and he was not the least bit concerned. He missed
the point that his data was now frozen in time if his software wouldn't
operate. His show is to give out financial advice and not computer advice.

Doug.

Doug Werth                                     Beechglen Development Inc.
[log in to unmask]                                       Cincinnati, Ohio

The opinions expressed do not necessarily represent the views or opinions
of Beechglen Development. They might, but not necessarily. They represent
solely the opinions of the author.