funct getdate(secs)
   xdays = int(secs/secsday)
   xdate = {^1970-01-01} + xdays
return xdate

I am not sure for DOS but I love this VFP option:

funct getdate(secs)
   xdays = int(secs/secsday)
   xdate = DATE(1970,1,1) + xdays
return xdate

>Hi People
>
>I've been getting out some bugs from an old FPD system (not mine). This prog reads in a text file, comma delim, and creates a FPD table from it.
>
>Originally it appended data from the source file:
>
>

>create table ergdata (data c(253))
>...
>tfile = thisdir + cfile && not MY code - ugh!
>sele ergdata
>append from (tfile) type sdf
>

>
>thus importing each line of the file into the only field of the "reception" table, ERGDATA.
>
>but I discovered that some files have >253 chars in a line (esp. in the top line - 1st record - where the column headings are. So it was truncating the first line and losing out on subsequent field names (this daft code later reads the first line and generates a table with one field for each column header. The code is so labrythine that I don't want to go into changing how this all works - very arcane!
>
>So I changed it to a memo field to hold the lines:
>
>

>Create Table ERGData (data m)
>

>
>and my code, to replace "append from (tfile) type sdf" is:
>
>

>lnFHdl	     = FOPEN( tfile)
>llFEOF	     = .F.
>DO while not llFEOF	
>  lcTextLine  = FGETS( lnFHdl, 400)
>  If FEOF( lnFHdl)	
>      llFEOF  = .T.
>  Else
>      Append Blank
>      Replace DATA with lcTextLine  && so each line goes in the memo field which holds > 253 chars
>  EndIf
>EndDo
>

>
>Now, having got rid of the bug (which was its inability to deal with slightly different arrangement of the import fields) and the program continuing to the end, I get an obscure error in the function GetDate (again - not mine) on the commented line below:
>
>

>funct getdate
>param secs
>xdays=int(secs/secsday)
>xdate={01/01/1970}+xdays              && error here
>return xdate
>

>
>It's invoked by:
>
>getdate(val(tickdtg)) && tickdtg being the field holding the date string
>
>The date field comes from each line read from the reception table memo field which is of the form emboldened below:
>
>... 3,0,2,0,1146561374,1,1,18
>
>and the error message is:
>
>

>Ambiguous date/date-time constant. Use the format:
>    {^yyyy-mm-dd[,][hh[:mm[:ss]] [alp]]}
>

>
>Now, I know that the import file has not been "converted" by the Append ... type SDF command
>
>and Help says:
>
>"Effective conversion of date data from SDF files to Visual FoxPro tables requires data to be stored in YYYYMMDD format.
>
>If date information is stored in ambiguous formats, you should map the date column to a character column of appropriate width so you can inspect the value then apply the correct conversion routine to create correctly formatted date data."
>
>Whatever the last paragraph means! Presumably a date in the form 1146561374 gets converted in some form to be compatible cos in this form it's meaningless to me.
>
>Anyone any ideas how I can get round this predicament?
>
>'ppreciate it
>
>Terry
>
>NOTE I'm running this FPD prog from VFP so I can use its power, debugger, etc.