>At some point someone advised to use substr(sys(2015),3), because in the 8.3 days that would return a 8-character string, and that portion began with a non-digit until 23-jan-2007.

FWIW, this isn't the first time that substr(sys(2015),3) has started with a digit. I wrote about this in FPA a few years ago, the last time the problem came up.

Tamar