Operand value formats
Certain types of operand values are used in more than one command and have a standard format. These types are:
- Numeric values
- In general, numeric values can be up to nine digits. Exceptions and specific maximum values are set by the individual command processors.
- Name values
- In general, name values are from one to eight characters. They contain any combination of letters, numbers, and special characters except for blanks and the delimiters described previously.
- Date and Time values
- These values are used with FROM and TO operands
to assign a time value, a date value, or both. Specific rules for
each are as follows.
- Time
- Time is always expressed as hhmmssth for hours, minutes,
seconds, and hundredths of a second. You can use delimiters to separate
the time components (for example, hh.mm.ss.th or hh:mm:ss:th).
When delimiters are not used, the first two digits are assumed to be the hour, unless they exceed 23. In this case, only the first digit is the hour. For example, 55 is 5:50, 257 is 2:57, and 187 is 18:70 (an error).
When delimiters are used, each value component is checked for validity. For example, 35.54 is an error, but 3554 is assumed to be 3:55:40, which is valid.
- Date
- A date can be either a calendar date or a relative date. If both the FROM and TO dates are specified, they must both be calendar dates or both relative dates.
- Calendar dates
- A calendar date can be either Gregorian (yyyy/mm/dd for
year/month/day) or Julian (yy/ddd for year/day-of-year). Several
formats for each are allowed. The date is recognized as Gregorian if the slash is used as a delimiter. Allowable formats are:
- yyyy/mm/dd
- mm/dd (the current year is assumed)
Leading zeros can be omitted from both month and day.
When the slash is not used, the date is assumed to be Julian. Allowable formats are:- yy.ddd
- yyddd
- ddd (the current year is assumed and leading zeros can be omitted in this format only)
Note: Two digit years provided as input are converted to:- 19yy if yy is 50–99
- 20yy if yy is 00–49
For example, 99097 is converted to 1999097 (April 7, 1999) whereas 05026 is converted to 2005026 (January 26, 2005).
- Relative dates
- A Relative Date can be specified as 0, -1, -2,... to signify a date relative to the current date. 0 represents today, -1 yesterday, -2 two days ago, and so on. If both FROM and TO dates are specified, they must be in the same format.
- Single Date or Time Values
- If you need to specify only the date, use a comma to designate
the missing time value. For example:
- TO=(2005/01/13,)
If you need to specify only the time, it is unnecessary to precede the value with a comma to designate the missing date value. For example:- TO=1230 or FROM=510
- Pairs of Date or Time values
- Most commands allow a pair of date and time values. For example:
- FROM(2005/01/16,09:00),TO(2005/01/17,17:30)
The following default values are provided if the value is not specified:- FROM date: 1973/01/01 (January 1, 1973)
- TO date: 2025/12/31 (December 31, 2025)
- FROM time: 00:00:00.00
- TO time: 23:59:59.99