Inserting the Date into a Character String

[Vatchunter]

Hi all,

How is the best way to capture the date and insert it into a character string? Basically, this is going to be a combination of the source of the data, and the date the my program was run on it.

The result I need is this: "File Source 03/11/2015"

Thanks for all your help!

 

[Mike Lewis]

Here's one suggestion:
[tt]
? " File source " + TRANSFORM(DATE())[/tt]

Mike

__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

Visual FoxPro articles, tips and downloads

 

[Vatchunter]

Thanks Mike! worked perfect!

 

[Olaf Doschke]

Make sure you don't use slashes, they are not allowed in file names or rather lead to creating folders.

DTOS() is best for a file name, just the 8 digits in YYYYMMDD format.

Bye, Olaf.

 

[Vatchunter]

Thanks Olaf, this code is just to populate a "source" field within the file that my program opens, and sets up for further evaluation.

Appreciate the quick responses.

vatchunter

 

[naveedjami]

I would use dtoc(date())

 

[Tore Bleken]

One of the underused functions is TextMerge().

?textmerge("File Source <<date()>>")

 

[Mike Lewis]

The advantage of TRANSFORM() over DTOC() is that it won't fail if the value is of the wrong data type.

On the other hand, that might be considered a disdavantage.

Mike



__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

Visual FoxPro articles, tips and downloads

 

[Olaf Doschke]

TRANSFORM has that advantage to transform (almost) any type to char (besides general). But DTOC(DATE()) can't fail.

TEXTMERGE is fine, especially with longer texts and more to merge in, you simply put any expression between << and >> you'd otherwise also be able to print via ? command, instead of using "stringpart1"+expression+"stringpart2"+expression+...

Bye, Olaf.

 

[ggreen61]

You have several choices -- DTOC(), DTOS() and MDY().

DTOC() will convert a date to character format based on setting of SET DATE
DTOS() will convert a date to format YYYYMMDD
MDY() will convert a date to Month Day, Year (e.g. January 1, 2015); based on setting of SET DATE and SET CENTURY

 

[NasibKalsi]

I will still use dtos() to help sorting on the field if ever needed.