*Date variables are stored as IEEE 64-bit (8-byte) integers that represent dates ranging from January 1 of the year 1 through December 31 of the year 9999, and times from 0:00:00 (midnight) through 11:59:59 PM.

*Date constants or variables used in comparisons or assignments do not have to be in the same format or use the same separators. Also, dates used for I/O operations such as input fields, output fields or key fields are also converted (if required) to the necessary format for the operation.

*Date fields have a predetermined size and format. The default internal format for date variables is *ISO.

There are two kinds of date data formats: 2-digit and 4-digit year formats. For 2-digit year formats, years in the range 1940 to 2039 can be represented. This leads to the possibility of a date overflow condition occurring when converting from a 4-digit year format to a 2-digit year format.

See the following topics for the date data type formats and *LOVAL, *HIVAL and default values.

Date Formats
Default Values for all Date Formats

The equivalent .NET data type is System.DateTime. 

Example

For examples on how to code date fields, see the examples in the following topics:

Date Operations
ADDDUR
MOVE
Moving Date and Time
EXTRACT
SUBDUR
TESTTIME

See Also

Data Types
System.DateTime
Date and Time