REPATTERN Function

Purpose

Takes a value containing a date in one pattern and returns that value converted to a date in another pattern.

Syntax

REPATTERN (d, p, q, w)

Parameters

d is a string expression representing a date. The length of d must be at least as long as the length of the source pattern specified by q. If d is larger, any excess characters must be formed by leading blanks.

The value for d must have a computational type and should have a character type. If not, the REPATTERN function converts d to character.

p is a supported date/time pattern used as the target.

q is a supported date/time pattern used as the source.

w specifies an expression (such as 1976) that can be converted to an integer.

Any positive numeric value is treated as a year.
Negative values are treated as an offset and subtracted from the current, system-supplied year.
If not specified, the value of w is the value specified in the -window compile-time option.
REPATTERN validates dates only when the optional w parameter is supplied.
If non-numeric data is supplied to REPATTERN and the optional w parameter is omitted then the result is a date of all zeros.

Description

The REPATTERN function takes a value containing a date in one pattern and returns that value converted to a date in a second pattern. The returned value has the attributes CHAR(m) NONVARYING where (m) is the length of the target pattern specified by p.

For all the supported patterns, see Date/Time Built-in Functions.

Examples

The following are some examples of how to use REPATTERN to convert between 2-digit-year and 4-digit-year date patterns. You can use REPATTERN to convert a date from any supported pattern to any other supported pattern even if the patterns do not use the same number of digits to hold the year value.

repat: proc options(main);

    dcl str char(16)var;

    on error
    begin;
        put skip list ('Error raised. Outside century window.');
        STOP:
    end;

    str = REPATTERN('770101','YYYYMMDD','YYMMDD', 1976);
    put skip list (str);

    str = REPATTERN('280101','YYYYMMDD','YYMMDD', 1976);
    put skip list (str);

    str = REPATTERN('19770101','YYMMDD','YYYYMMDD', 1976);
    put skip list (str);

    str = REPATTERN('20280101','YYMMDD','YYYYMMDD', 1976);
    put skip list (str);

    str = REPATTERN('19700101','YYMMDD','YYYYMMDD', 1976);
    put skip list (str);

end;

This code sample prints the following:

19770101

20280101

770101

280101

Error raised. Outside century window.

Restrictions

None.