TEST-FORMATTED-DATETIME
The TEST-FORMATTED-DATETIME function tests whether a data item that represents a date, a time, or a combined date and time is valid according to the specified format.
The function type is integer.
- argument-1
- Must be a national, UTF-8, or an alphanumeric literal in a date format, a time format, or a combined date and time format. For details, see Date and time formats.
- argument-2
- Must be of the same type as argument-1.
Returned values
If no format problems or range problems occur during the evaluation of argument-2 according to the format in argument-1, the returned value is zero. Otherwise, the returned value is the ordinal character position where the first error in argument-2 is detected. In FUNCTION TEST-FORMATTED-DATETIME ("YYYYMMDD", A-DATE), where A-DATE is an 8-character data item, if A-DATE contains the value 20051314, the returned value will be 6, which indicates that the character 3 is in error because the month portion of A-DATE (character positions 5 and 6) contains 13. If A-DATE contains the value 15990316, the returned value will be 2, which indicates that the second character 5 is in error. The character 5 occupies the first position in which it can be determined that the year is less than 1601.
Examples
FUNCTION TEST-FORMATTED-DATETIME ("YYYYMMDD", "19950215") returns 0 because the data item in argument-2 representing a date is valid according to the specified format in argument-1.
FUNCTION TEST-FORMATTED-DATETIME ("YYYYMMDD", "19959215") returns 5 because the data item in argument-2 has an incorrect character at position 5 for the first digit of the month in YYYYMMDD.
FUNCTION TEST-FORMATTED-DATETIME ("YYYYMMDDThhmmss", "19950215T0514:27") returns 14 because the data item in argument-2 has an incorrect colon ":" character at position 14 instead of the first character of the number of seconds according to the specified format in argument-1.