Use this field-level keyword to specify the format of a date field. This keyword is only valid for date fields (data type L).
The format of the keyword is:
DATFMT(date-format)
The date-format parameter specifies the format of a date. The following table describes the valid date formats and their default separator values.
| Format name | Date-format parameter | Date format and separator | Field length | Example |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Job default | *JOB | |||
| Month/day/year | *MDY | mm/dd/yy | 8 | 06/21/90 |
| Day/month/year | *DMY | dd/mm/yy | 8 | 21/06/90 |
| Year/month/day | *YMD | yy/mm/dd | 8 | 90/06/21 |
| Julian | *JUL | yy/ddd | 6 | 90/172 |
| International standards organization | *ISO | yyyy-mm-dd | 10 | 1990-06-21 |
| IBM® USA standard | *USA | mm/dd/yyyy | 10 | 06/21/1990 |
| IBM European standard | *EUR | dd.mm.yyyy | 10 | 21.06.1990 |
| Japanese industrial standard Christian era | *JIS | yyyy-mm-dd | 10 | 1990-06-21 |
If you do not specify the DATFMT keyword, the default is *ISO.
If you specify *JOB, the high-level language and the application handle the format as *ISO. On output, the system converts the format to the format that the Date Format Job Definition Attribute specifies. On input, the system converts the format to *ISO before it passes control to the application. There are always 10 spaces reserved on the display screen for a Date field with DATFMT(*JOB), even though 8 characters in the case of *MDY, *DMY, and *YMD, or 6 characters in the case of *JUL are displayed.
If you specify the *ISO, *USA, *EUR, or *JIS value, you cannot specify the DATSEP keyword. These date formats have fixed separators.
The DATFMT keyword overrides the job attribute for a date field. It does not change the system default.
It is the responsibility of the high-level language and the application to format the date field according to the format specified on the DATFMT keyword and use the separators specified on the DATSEP keyword. The system does not format fields on output. The system validates the date field (L data type) on input according to the format that the DATFMT keyword specifies and the separator that the DATSEP keyword specifies.
Option indicators are not valid for this keyword, although option indicators can be used to condition the field for which it is specified.
The following example shows how to specify the DATFMT keyword.
|...+....1....+....2....+....3....+....4....+....5....+....6....+....7....+....8
00010A
00020A R RECORD
00030A DATFLD1 L B 5 2DATFMT(*JUL)
00040A DATFLD2 L B 5 22DATFMT(*EUR)
00050A DATFLD3 L B 5 42DATFMT(*JOB)
A
If the date to be displayed is June 21, 1990, the date format defined in the Job Definition Attributes is *MDY and the date separator defined in the Job Definition Attributes is a slash (/), the following values will be displayed when RECORD is written.
DATFLD1 90/172 DATFLD2 21.06.1990 DATFLD3 06/21/90