-Caveat Lector-
> Milestone #9: February 29, 2000. On this date, leap day occurs.
> Most people assume that every fourth year is a leap year. However,
> every fourth turn-of-the-century is a leap year, too. The year
> 1900 was not a leap year; the year 2000 is. Therefore, if the
> computer doesn't account for the fact that 2000 WILL, in fact,
> have a February 29, then all kinds of calculations WILL be off,
> including billing cycles. Unfortunately, many programmers were
> unaware of this rule, and their programs WILL stumble over this
> date, increasing the chaos.
Probably not. In my many years as a COBOL programmer, I found most
programmers calculated leap year by dividing the year by 4 (erroneously),
if there was no remainder, their code treated the year as a leap year.
But as has been pointed out, this logic is wrong when used on a turn-
of-the-century year -- 1900 can be evenly divided by 4, and yet is not a
leap year.
But as luck would have it, the year 2000 IS a leap year...hence, even
the erroneous code that divides the year by 4 will work this year...so
as long as the basic operating system recognizes that the current year
is 2000 (something that will have long been determined by the time
2/29/2000 arrives), even bad leap year logic that is still out there
will work correctly.
What I haven't seen widely mentioned is another 'milestone' that we
tested for in Y2K remediation work: October 10, 2000. For systems
utilizing the standard MMDDYY date format, 101000 is the first date
that will fill all 6 digits...
I expect that date to be as much of a yawner as the other 'milestone'
dates have been...
June
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