Albert, Perfect! The secret was the & Thanks!! Mike
________________________________ From: Albert Berry <[email protected]> To: RBASE-L Mailing List <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, March 18, 2012 12:06 PM Subject: [RBASE-L] - RE: Converting text to date or time To continue - create both variables in the before start eep in the form. On 17/03/2012 10:37 PM, Michael J. Sinclair wrote: > The reason I am asking is because when I run the first method within an EEP, > I am getting an error (Invalid data type) > Running the same code from an R> works fine. > Running the second method works fine, but as I recall, retyping variables is > considered a less than ideal practice. > What I am actually doing is capturing the output of the DIR command from > within Rbase, and then trying to extract the file name with it's date, and > time and size from each line of the file created by the DIR command. All the > data I capture is text that has to be converted. > Mike > > *From:* Javier Valencia <[email protected]> > *To:* RBASE-L Mailing List <[email protected]> > *Sent:* Sunday, March 18, 2012 12:09 AM > *Subject:* [RBASE-L] - RE: Converting text to date or time > > Mike, > Both methods will work but as Albert mentioned I would probably use the first > one. > Since TEXT variables can hold any character or number, you need to have a way > to check that you have a valid date, otherwise you will get a null result. > For example, values such as: > SET VAR vDate TEXT =’02/30/2012” > Or > SET VAR vDate TEXT = ‘13/12/2012’ > will not convert correctly. Best practice is to collect data in its correct > type and do the validity checking at data entry or data import time. > Javier, > Javier Valencia, PE > O: 913-829-0888 > H: 913-397-9605 > C: 913-915-3137 > *From:*[email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] *On Behalf Of *Michael J. > Sinclair > *Sent:* Saturday, March 17, 2012 8:35 PM > *To:* RBASE-L Mailing List > *Subject:* [RBASE-L] - Converting text to date or time > Hi All, > I want to convert some text into a date or into a time > Is there a function that does that? > If not, which is better... > SET VAR vdatetext TEXT > SET VAR vdatetext = '03/17/2012' > SET VAR vdate DATE > SET VAR vdate = .vdatetext > vs > SET VAR vdate TEXT = '03/17/2012' > SET VAR vdate DATE > vs > Something else? > Mike > >
