The dBase format is pretty common among GIS files, (it's used in ESRI Shape files and the MapInfo .DAT file is a dBase file, and commonly seen in MS Access and Excel hangouts) but in a dBase file header there are only 3 bytes for the creation date, arranged as year, month and day (bytes at offsets 1, 2, and 3 from the start of the file). I set my computer's date ahead to June 4, 2000, and when I created these sorts of files with the above mentioned software these bytes indicate a date of 100/6/4. This says in effect that we are in the year 100 of the 20th century, and not year 0 of the 21st century. As long as you apply one or the other convention consistenly you get the right date, but woe to those whose software components mix them! So my question is what's the right way to treat these? Should the June 4, 2000 date be 00/6/4 or 100/6/4? To get the former, you have to test to see if the year is >= 2000 and less than 3000 then subtract 2000 from the year. If it's 1900-something, you subtract 1900. Anyway, is there a convention yet for how these should be treated? - Bill Thoen ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe from this list, send e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put "unsubscribe MAPINFO-L" in the message body, or contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
