ILE COBOL Programmer's Guide


What is the Year 2000 Problem?

The year 2000 problem involves using two digits to represent the year. If the date fields in your program only have the last 2 digits of the year, on 1/1/2000 the current year will be represented as 00. That means the current year will be less than the previous year because 00 is less than 99.

Century support for the 21st Century has been added to ILE COBOL. This means that if you are retrieving a year with the last 2 digits in the range of 40 - 99, the digits "19" will be added as the prefix, and you will retrieve a four-digit year in the range of 1940 - 1999. Contrastingly, if you are retrieving a year with the last 2 digits in the range of 00 - 39, the digits "20" will be added as the prefix, and you will retrieve a four-digit year in the range of 2000 - 2039.


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