FoxPro YEAR 2000 Compliance

FoxPro 2.6 and Visual FoxPro 3.0/5.0 are year 2000 compliant.

Foxpro applications have to be examined to determine whether or not they are compliant.

To make an application compliant, we suggest the following steps be taken:

1.  The "SET CENTURY ON" command must be issued in the application's top level program.

2.   Date fields in any window must be expanded by 2 digits, if they are not already displaying/accepting the century. Reports should also have the date field expanded but this may not be an absolute requirement.

3.  All programs (files with an extension of prg, spr, or mpr) should be examined for string manipulation which involves '19' and the code should be
checked for compliance.

4.  Any ordering that is done using a date, especially those using the function DTOC() should be examined and tested. DTOC() has been found to be problematic in certain cases. DTOS() has been found to be more reliable for
any ordering functions since it works consistently and independent of the
"SET CENTURY" and "SET DATE" settings. DTOC() could be used reliably if the optional 2nd parameter (1) is used.

For example, use DTOC(mydate,1) instead of DTOC(mydate). All programs (see item 3) which contain "ORDER BY", "SORT", or "INDEX ON" should be examined to determine millennium compliance. All dbfs should also be examined to determine how their tags are defined.

We will add any additional information as it becomes available.

Don Fracapane
Technical Consultant, Administrative Information Services