Comments on: Comparing Dates in FileMaker

By: Steve

Steve — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 04:29:47 +0000

I have answered my own question after a bit more research. There are 3 reg settings that are needed to sort this issue out. Under HKEY_USERS\\Control Panel\International. iDate value needs to be 1, sCountry need to be Australia and sShortDate needs to be d/MM/yyyy.
Thanks to me for my help!

By: Steve

Steve — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 01:16:47 +0000

btw : The regional and language settings on all servers in the farm are set to Australian.

By: Steve

Steve — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 01:15:54 +0000

All,

I understand what this article is discussing but I am still at a loss with what to do with my problem:
I have Filemaker Pro 6.0v1 running in a Xenapp5/W2K8 10 server farm (gutsy/stupid I know). The problem, in its simplest form is that one user can open the app and start a new DB from a template and they get mm/dd/yy while the user sat next to them does the same thing and gets dd/mm/yy. Upon further testing, I can log in and start a db from a template and get mm/dd/yy and then, in the same session, open a new db from no template, enter a date field, enter the ‘current date’ and get dd/mm/yy. I have changed the iDate registry value for HKEY_Users and HKEY_LocalMachine to 1 (dd/mm/yy). Some users work, some don’t.
To top it off, the users that don’t work, used to. According to the previous engineer nothing was changed that could have concievably caused this.
Help!!!
Thanks for any assistance that you can offer.
Steve

By: Joe Vulgan

Joe Vulgan — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 17:50:41 +0000

Geoff,

Can’t thank you enough… I tried every delimiter except commas between the date numbers. Yes, of course it works now.

Thanks a lot,

Joe

By: Geoff Coffey

Geoff Coffey — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 17:36:32 +0000

Joe:

Double check the article. The first few paragraphs are devoted to explaining exactly why what you are trying to do will not work.

The next few paragraphs tell you how you should put dates in your calculation, and why.

In a nutshell: You can’t put a bare date into a calculation like that. Instead, use something like this:

if(Date < Date(04,1,2009), Cost*.0875, Cost*.0975)

Geoff

By: Joe Vulgan

Joe Vulgan — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 17:16:48 +0000

Sorry to say, I am trying for the first time to evaluate dates and your suggestions are not working for me. Here is what I am doing:
There are three fields:
Date, Cost, Tax. I am trying to change the tax calculation base on the date. Doesn’t work for me in FileMaker pro 6.0 or in 10.0.
This is what does not evaluate:
Tax=If(Date<04/01/2009, Cost*.0875, Cost*.0975)
I have tried all the variations in the above date discussion… I always get the result of 9.75 regardless of the date. What am I doing wrong?

Thanks for the help,

Joe

By: Toby

Toby — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 17:36:43 +0000

It appears to me that the author was injecting a bit of humor into his post (that is allowable, this is not an AP article after all), and not being prejudiced. I personally wish the US would go General-to-Specific or the reverse. I have lived my adult life with the US system and still don’t feel it is intuitive (maybe we can all switch to a new universal 10 base calendar and just start over). With that said, a US citizen is likely to write from a US perspective, just as much as any other citizen would write from their own perspective. Don’t attack the author for being helpful.

By: Rob Russell

Rob Russell — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 22:50:44 +0000

Don’t start me on date storage in FileMaker Pro

Regardless of whether dmy (little to big – what most of the world uses), mdy (weird) or ymd (big to little – japanese) is the user’s system format or FileMaker Pro’s file format, there are other gotchas as well.

One that recently came to mind is “getastext ( thedate )” which will always return the file’s format (defined by the system formats at creation time or when saved as a clone). If Geoff sends me a file on my New Zealand computer with Aussie dates, then getastext will likely return m/d/y, which is a pain if displaying a date in a string (such as a dialog).

The hoops one must jump through to work out the user’s system formatting locale are not insignificant.

By: gessie

gessie — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 03:25:54 +0000

Weird!! – wot’s weird??
What’s weird about: the first day of the fifth month of 2008?? Nothing at all it’s logic is inherent in the progression from particular to general!
What IS weird is what the Americans like to foist upon the rest of us – Month (Four) Day (Twenty) Year (Two Thousand and Eight) – which just flip-flops around – but they still seem to think they live at the centre of the universe and everyone else is weird!
Personally, when it comes to sorting lists of dates properly, which I have to do all the time for film titles, I much prefer the Japanese system: Year; Month; Day – which progresses logically from the general to the particular. Then at least you get a properly sorted list according to date!
@Homan – Ah well, I can’t imagine Filemaker Inc. ever going for local customs – so I can forget them ever doing it using a properly logical system from the start!!
NaH Jesse – I like your post – just not your inbuilt prejudices. When were you first taught to think globally?
gessie

By: O Homan

O Homan — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 12:08:36 +0000

Actually, this is probably an issue where Filemaker (and many other programs as well) can improve a lot. The standard US date format for most software is a bit silly. After all, more than 95% of the world’s population lives outside the USA, including those in England (yes, they still use feet and inches, too). Here in the middle of Europe, my Filemaker still refuses to accept the local dd.mm.yyyy format for FIND commands but insists on using mm.dd.yyyy dates, even though the operating system has the correct locale defined. Why does Filemaker need to redefine the locale again, why can’t it take the OS locale?