Date:         Fri, 6 Mar 1998 02:14:29 GMT
Reply-To:     Melvin Klassen <Klassen@UVIC.CA>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU>
From:         Melvin Klassen <Klassen@UVIC.CA>
Organization: University of Victoria
Subject:      Re: Y2000 problem ?
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

On Fri, 6 Mar 1998 03:20:00, Frederik Durieux <FDURIEUX@RAYCHEM.COM>
wrote:
 
> Maybe I'm missing something here, please help me out.
> SAS stores lots of information about catalogs, tables, macro's etc. in
> SASHELP tables. However, when consulting the SASHELP.VCATALG table
> to check when a catalog entry has been updated for the last time,
> I saw that SAS stores this date value (column name: MODIFIED) as $8,
> resulting in 03/05/98. The same applies for the result of a PROC CATALOG.
> As we use these dates for automatic updating of our programs,
> this doesn't look real year2000 proof!
> I hope I am wrong about this, but it scares me about some other possible
> anomalies in SAS. I expected these dates as SAS relative dates (8.).
 
What's the problem?   No value in the catalogue-entry will have a date
earlier than '01/01/80' (I've been using SAS since 1976),
so you can use a "sliding-window" starting at 01/01/1980 and ending
at 01/01/2079, to determine where 03/05/98 "fits" into this window.
 
I'll be retired by 01/01/2020, so the "end-date"
of the above window isn't too important to me.  :-)
 
Also, I'll guess that this problem will have been fixed in SAS Version
7,
(along with other Y2K problems and many other "anomalies")
which SAS will recommend that users install, and convert their
programs to use, before 01/01/00.
 
P.S. If you are scared by anomalies in SAS, you should be really
scared
in anomalies about other less-well-written software, and should donate
your computer to some elementary-school, and dust off your slide-rule.