Date Function – Queen of COBOL

COBOL has a couple nifty date functions that allow you to add or subtract from a given date.

The INTEGER-OF-DATE function converts a date in the Gregorian calendar (formatted as CCYYMMDD) to an integer, allowing you to add to subtract from the date.

The DATE-OF-INTEGER function does the opposite, and converts an integer to a Gregorian date (formatted CCYYMMDD).

Here’s how I do it:

In WORKING-STORAGE SECTION:

01 WS-DATE-IN PIC X(8). 01 WS-DATE-IN-NUM REDEFINES WS-DATE-IN PIC 9(8). 01 WS-DATE-OUT. 05 WS-DATE-OUT-CC PIC XX. 05 WS-DATE-OUT-YY PIC XX. 05 WS-DATE-OUT-MM PIC XX. 05 WS-DATE-OUT-DD PIC XX. 01 WS-DATE-OUT-NUM REDEFINES WS-DATE-OUT PIC 9(8). 01 WS-DATE-TEMP PIC 9(8) VALUE 0. 01 WS-DAYS PIC 9(3) VALUE 0. 01 WS-CCYYMMDD PIC 9(8). 01 OUTPUT-DATE PIC 9(8).

In PROCEDURE DIVISION:

ACCEPT WS-CCYYMMDD FROM CENTURY-DATE. MOVE 30 TO WS-DAYS. MOVE 0 TO WS-DATE-TEMP. MOVE FUNCTION INTEGER-OF-DATE (WS-DATE-IN-NUM) TO WS-DATE-TEMP. COMPUTE WS-DATE-TEMP = WS-DATE-TEMP + WS-DAYS. MOVE FUNCTION DATE-OF-INTEGER (WS-DATE-TEMP) TO WS-DATE-OUT-NUM. MOVE WS-DATE-OUT TO OUTPUT-DATE.

Easy, right? One great place to use this is on a customer invoice. Suppose I’m processing a customer invoice today that would have a due date of today + 30. This is the best way of found of doing this.

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