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FAQ 014: How VESOFT products deal with the year 2000         96/11/18
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MPEX, SECURITY and VEAUDIT version 27.ymmdd will work just fine in the
year 2000 and beyond.  All internal date manipulations use  a  special
format  that  fully  accomodates  dates  in the 21st century.  You may
enter dates with 4-digit years, and  output  dates  in  YYYY/MM/DD  or
MM/DD/YYYY  or  DD/MM/YYYY format.  The one possible area of ambiguity
happens when you enter a date with a two-digit year.  In what  century
should  VESOFT  products  assume  this date function?  We thought that
different people would have different views on this, so we decided  to
give you four different options:

  1)  BY  DEFAULT,  throughout  the 1900s, all two-digit years will be
assumed to be in the 1900s.  The date 01/01/01 will be seen as January
1, 1901; the date 02/02/99 will be seen as February 2, 1999.  This  is
compatible  with the way things are in version 25., and will thus give
you plenty of time to change your  STREAMX  jobs,  your  MPEX  command
files, and your SECURITY menus to use unambiguous 4-digit years.  Once
you  run any of our products in the year 2000, though, we'll switch to
the "50-50"  principle.  Every  year  that's  less  than  50  will  be
assumed  to  be  in  the 2000s; 01/01/01 will thus be January 1, 2001.
Every year that's 50 or more will be  assumed  to  be  in  the  1900s;
02/02/99  will  be February 2, 1999.  We think this will best fit with
people's intuitions.

  2) If you want ALL TWO-DIGIT YEARS TO REFER TO THE 1900s, just do a
   :SETJCW VESOFTYEARBASE=1900 In this mode, 01/01/01 will be  January
   1,  1901, and 02/02/99 will be February 2, 1999, regardless of what
   the actual calendar date is.

  3) If you want ALL TWO-DIGIT YEARS TO REFER TO THE 2000s, just do a
   :SETJCW VESOFTYEARBASE=2000 In this mode, 01/01/01 will be  January
   1,  2001, and 02/02/99 will be February 2, 2099, regardless of what
   the actual calendar date is.

  4) Finally, if you want ALL TWO-DIGIT YEARS LESS THAN 50 TO REFER TO
THE 2000s, and ALL TWO-DIGIT YEARS 50 OR MORE TO REFER TO THE 1900s,
just do a :SETJCW VESOFTYEARBASE=1950 In this mode, 01/01/01  will  be
January  1,  2001,  and  02/02/99 will be February 2, 1999.  This will
probably be most intuitive for  you  and  all  your  users;  it's  the
setting  we recommend.  Why didn't we just make this the default right
away?  Well, we care a lot about compatibility, and we didn't want the
new version to break any existing jobs, command files, or  menus.   We
thought some of our users might, for instance, use 1/1/1 to refer to a
date  that's  earlier than any other date (1/1/1901), and use this for
sorting or comparison or subtraction  purposes.   We  decided  to,  by
default,  give  them  a few years to fix their files to make sure that
all their early 1900's dates use an explicit 4-digit  yr.   If  you're
sure, however, that you never use a 2-digit year less than 50 to refer
to  the  1900s  -- and most people don't -- then we suggest you do the
:SETJCW VESOFTYEARBASE=1950.  This will let you use 2-digit years both
for the 1900s and the 2000s safely, conveniently and intuitively.