Here is the complete story why _ was so ideal with dates:
The application handles power contracts. Contract can be for a
defined time defined by start and end dates or only by start day
being valid temporarily. yyyymmdd as an integer representation of
date and _ as an infinte date or undefined future date was a good
choice because:
- comparisons between intervals and values > < and CC, CO, etc. worked
- 0 100 100#. is easy way to parse year month and day
- _ looks like "infinte" and is suitable directly to gui User
understands that a contract with starting day 20080317 and ending day
_ means that the contract is valid "forever" unless date is given.
- _ is one of the reasons why I like J because this solved a lot of
problems with this application.
Thanks to this forum there is a lot of clever methos to replace the _
where it causes NaN error.
Anssi
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