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From: Helpful Harry <HelpfulHarry@BusyWorking.com>
Newsgroups: comp.databases.filemaker
Subject: Re: Date Comparison Again
Date: Sun, 08 Nov 2015 12:40:38 +1300
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Xref: csiph.com comp.databases.filemaker:2482

In article <n1lpte$sos$4@news.motzarella.org>, Howard Schlossberg
<howard@nospam.fmprosolutions.com> wrote:
> On 11/7/2015 12:44 AM, Charles H. Sampson wrote:
> > 
> > I start out the script with the following:
> >
> >       Set Variable [$StartupDate; Value:Get(ScriptParameter)]
> >       Set Variable [$ThisDay; Value:Day ($StartupDate)]
> >       Set Variable [$ThisMonth; Value:Month ($StartupDate)]
> >       Set Variable [$ThisYear; Value:Year ($StartupDate)]
> >
> > Subsequent custom dialogs indicate that these four values are what I
> > expect. Comparisons of this date to other dates don't work. (I'll supply
> > more detail if needed.)
> >
> > Here's the new piece of information. If I follow the first Set Variable
> > above (Get(ScriptParameter)) with
> >
> >       Set Variable [$StartupDate; Value:Date (Month ($StartupDate);
> >         Day ($StartupDate); Year ($StartupDate))]
> >
> > the script now works. Probem solved? Maybe so, but I'd like to know why
> > implicit type conversions appear to work sometimes and don't in others.
> 
> My guess is that the day, month and year functions tell FileMaker that 
> the input is to be treated as a date, so that any text input (which is 
> ALL a script parameter is) is first converted to a date automatically so 
> that FM can get the day, month or year.
> 
> To fix your problem, just change the first step to:
> 
> Set Variable [ $StartupDate; Value: GetAsDate( get(scriptParameter) ) ]

Unlike many programming languages, FileMaker is pretty forgiving about
mixing data types ... *BUT* dates and times do seem to be more picky
than numbers and text. Possibly that's at least partly due to the
various different formatting dates can have (i.e. DD/MM/YY or
MM/DD/YYYY or DD MMMMM, YYYY, or DD.MM.YYYY, etc.)

Helpful Harry  :o)