DATE Directive

DATE, TIME and TIMESTAMP are special field types that are not supported natively by COBOL. To use such fields, a conversion is necessary. The DATE directive defines the conversion rules.

$EFD DATE [ = { DateFormatString      }  ]               { TimeFormatString      }               { DateTimeFormatString  }               { JulianDateFormatString}

or

*(( EFD DATE [ = { DateFormatString      }  ] ))                  { TimeFormatString      }                  { DateTimeFormatString  }                  { JulianDateFormatString}

or

*>(( EFD DATE [ = { DateFormatString      }  ] ))                   { TimeFormatString      }                   { DateTimeFormatString  }                   { JulianDateFormatString}

If DateFormatString is not specified, then six-digit (or six-character) fields are retrieved as YYMMDD from the database. Eight-digit fields are retrieved as YYYYMMDD.

Format strings are the representation of the format, composed of a sequence of characters. Each character represents a digit of the COBOL field. Possible values for characters are:

Character	Meaning
J	Julian date digit
E	Day of year (001–366)
Y	Year (2 or 4 digit)
M	Month (01-12)
D	Day of month (01-31)
H	Hour (00-23)
N	Minute (00-59)
S	Second (00-59)
T	Cents (00-99)

The following table lists all supported DateFormatStrings:

DateFormatString	Meaning
YYMMDD	big endian date with two digit year
YYYYMMDD	big endian date with four digit year
MMDDYY	middle endian date with two digit year
MMDDYYYY	middle endian date with four digit year
DDMMYY	little endian date with two digit year
DDMMYYYY	little endian date with four digit year
YYYYEEE	four digit year followed by day of year
EEEYYYY	day of year followed by four digit year
YYEEE	two digit year followed by day of year
EEEYY	day of year followed by two digit year

The following table lists all supported TimeFormatStrings:

TimeFormatString	Meaning
HH	hours
HHNN	hours and minutes
HHNNSS	hours, minutes and seconds
HHNNSSTT	hours, minutes, seconds and cents

DateFormatStrings and TimeFormatStrings from the above tables can be combined together into a DateTimeFormatString. There are two types of DateTimeFormatStrings:

1.	DateFormatString + TimeFormatString

2.	TimeFormatString + DateFormatString

JulianDateFormatString is a serie of “J” characters. Up to eight “J” characaters are allowed. Only for iss dictionaries it is possible to specify the julian base date by setting the configuration property iscobol.compiler.iss_julian_base at compile time.

When the COBOL field contains more digits than the ones required to store the value, leading digits are set to 0. When the COBOL field contains less digits than the ones required to store the value, leading digits are truncated. When the date or time values are not complete (e.g.: a time field with hours and minutes only), they’re completed with default values by the database.

You may place the DATE directive in front of a group item, so long as you also use the USE GROUP directive.

Note: isCOBOL SQL Server requires that the number of digits in the format string matches with the number of digits of the data-item, otherwise a conversion error occurs. In addition, isCOBOL SQL Server doesn’t support hundredths of seconds (the value T in the format string), therefore they’re truncated.

Example

The next snippets show how to define the DATE-PURCHASED field as a date on the database. Note that when the field is a group item, the USE GROUP directive is used as well.

$EFD DATE=YYYYMMDD  05 DATE-PURCHASED      PIC 9(08).  05 PAY-METHOD          PIC X(05).

The column DATE_PURCHASED will have eight digits and will be type DATE in the database, with a format of YYYYMMDD.

$EFD DATE=YYYYMMDD, USE GROUP  05 DATE-PURCHASED.     10 YYYY             PIC 9(04).     10 MM               PIC 9(02).     10 DD               PIC 9(02).  05 PAY-METHOD          PIC X(05).