Y2K and /rdb v. 7
The Y2K bug happens when data representing the year segment of a date
is expressed in 2 digits instead of 4, leaving the century ambiguous.
By default, /rdb v. 7 date programs coerce two digit years to four,
using the following rule: if the current year is prior to 2000,
years 00-99 fall into the 20th century: after 1999,
years 70-99 fall into the 20th century and years
00-69 fall into the 21st century.
For users of /rdb v. 7,
this coercion can be overridden by setting a date format
environment variable which includes only two places for the year
field, as an interim measure whilst year data are converted to four digits.
However, this approach is not suitable for date fields which are
manipulated by the computedate, julian and gregorian commands,
as an exact date is essential to any computation, and the 00-69/70-99
assumption may not be true for an arbitrary set of dates.
For specific command-by-command information on date routines,
read the write-ups on
on
computedate,
convertdate,
gregorian,
julian,
todaysdate and
wday.
TIP: If all of your current 2-digit year date data fall into the
20th century, the simplest solution is to run /rdb's
convertdate
program on it prior to the end of 1999.
Y2K and /rdb v. 6.3
/rdb v. 6.3 (1992) also supports four-digit year dates,
although the four digit format is not the default, and there is no
handy convertdate routine for 6.3 -- however, the same result can
be achieved with version 6.3's julian, compute and gregorian
commands.
Please refer to the 6.3 hard copy manual which was distributed with
the /rdb v. 6.3 software for specific information about these commands.
For more information, contact rdb@rdb.com.