Business System Defaults › How to Set Business System Defaults › Rules for Using Established Edit Patterns

Rules for Using Established Edit Patterns

Follow the rules listed to use established edit patterns:

• When separators are not used between components in the date, time, or timestamp edit patterns, then the entry must include all digits of each component. Any white space included in the entry is ignored.

• When date components are separated by valid separators in the edit pattern, it is not necessary to enter leading zeroes for components with values between 1 and 9, inclusive.

• When YYYY is part of an edit pattern defined with separators, you may omit up to the first three characters of the year. The value for these characters will be taken from the date that is set in the system clock. That is, if your system clock is set to 1999, and you enter 83 for the year, the year defaults to 1983. If you enter only 3, the date defaults to 1993. If your system clock is set to 2000, the dates, in these examples, would default to 2083 and 2003 respectively.

• When components are separated by valid separators in the edit pattern and you intend to accept defaults, you must enter at least one digit for each component.

• If multiple components of an edit pattern target the same value, then the rightmost component overrides. For example, the century code (C) and the 4-digit year code (YYYY) both supply the two most significant digits of the 4-digit year where:
  • C = 0 represents 1900,
  • C = 1 represents 2000,
  • C = 2 represents 2100.

• A date value of all zeroes is a special case. If specified components are set to zeroes, then the unspecified components used for the internal timestamp are also set to zeroes. In the following example where YYYY is unspecified, the 4-digit year value is interpreted as 0000 for the associated timestamp.