DATSEP (Date Separator) Keyword for Physical and Logical Files

Use this field-level keyword to specify the separator character for a date field. This keyword is valid only for date fields (data type L).

The format of the keyword is:

DATSEP(*JOB | 'date-separator')

The date separator parameter specifies the separator character that appears between the year, month, and day. Valid values are a slash (/), dash (-), period (.), comma (,) or blank ( ). The parameter must be enclosed in apostrophes.

If you specify *JOB, the default is the job attribute.

For physical files, if you do not specify the DATSEP keyword, the default is the job attribute.

For logical files, if you do not specify the DATSEP keyword, the default is the date separator from the physical file. If you did not specify the DATSEP keyword for the physical file field (*ISO, *USA, *EUR, or *JIS was specified on the DATFMT keyword), the default for DATSEP is the job attribute.

If you specify the *ISO, *USA, *EUR, or *JIS date format value on the DATFMT keyword, you cannot specify the DATSEP keyword. These formats have a fixed date separator.

The DATSEP keyword overrides the job attribute. It does not change the system default.