>>Just made me wonder, is there a format code for a Transform function which would give a date string in a strict date format?
>>
>>I'm thinking of something shorthand for
>>
>>set date ymd
>>set cent on
>>cStrictDateExpr="{^"+transform(date(), "@R 9999-99-99")+"}"
>>set cent &oldCent
>>set date &oldDate
>
>Curious- why would you need this? If you have a date value already created in a variable, then it is not ambigous. Only constants are. The strict date format is not meant for user display...

Settings table, .ini files and such, where data of various types should be represented as strings, and later converted from strings to real data, using Eval() - this should make them unambiguous. Namely, I have a table where I store some local config values, and it takes the dates when were some maintenance chores last done. I wouldn't like to use CTOD(), because it's dependent on a date setting, so I'd rather store these dates as strings in strict date format, like {^1999-07-03}, Eval() on that and forget about worrying.

Also, builders and source code generators in general, though I can't imagine a reason why would I have a fixed date anywhere around there.