KEDIT and the Year 2000

Here is the latest available information about KEDIT and the Year 2000:

Year 2000 Compliance

KEDIT is a text editor, used to type in and edit computer programs, notes, and similar documents, and has minimal involvement with dates.

KEDIT for Windows
The current version of KEDIT for Windows, KEDIT for Windows 1.5 Service Level 3, released in January 1998, as well as KEDIT for Windows 1.5 Service Level 2, released in January 1997, have no known Year 2000-related issues.

KEDIT for DOS and KEDIT for OS/2
The current versions of KEDIT for DOS and KEDIT for OS/2, which are KEDIT 5.0 for DOS Service Level 4 and KEDIT 5.0 for OS/2 Service Level 4, released in December 1997, have no known Year 2000-related issues.

Older Versions of KEDIT
KEDIT 5.0 for DOS Service Level 3, KEDIT 5.0 for OS/2 Service Level 3, KEDIT for Windows 1.5 Service Level 1, and earlier releases of KEDIT, have two known Year 2000-related issues. Note that both of these issues concern rarely-used features and affect very few KEDIT users. Both of these have been resolved in the current versions of KEDIT:

KEDIT's DIR command, like the DOS DIR command, displays a list of files. The list is normally sorted by filename, but you can use the DIRSORT or SET DEFSORT commands to sort the list by date, and this sort saw files created in 20xx as created before files created in 19xx.
A KEDIT macro normally uses the built-in DATE() function to access the current date. However, macros can also use EXTRACT /TIME/ to access the current date, and TIME.3 gave an incorrect result beginning in the year 2000.

Existing licensees of KEDIT 5.0 for DOS and OS/2, and KEDIT for Windows 1.5, can download a free upgrade to the current maintenance release from our web site.

Users of version 4.0 or earlier of KEDIT for DOS or OS/2, and users of KEDIT for Windows 1.0, can purchase upgrades to the current versions.

Details of KEDIT's Date-Related Features

What follows is a description of all of the date-related features of KEDIT. In addition to the Year 2000 fixes discussed above, there have been minor date-related enhancements to some of these features in recent versions of KEDIT.

DIR command

The DIR command creates a DIR.DIR file that displays information about files on your disk, including the date that each file was last written to. By default, the date is displayed using a two-digit year, but in all versions of KEDIT for Windows, and in KEDIT 5.0 Service Level 4, you can use the SET DIRFORMAT command to have the date displayed using a 4-digit year.

The information in the DIR.DIR file is normally sorted by filename, but you can use the DIRSORT or SET DEFSORT commands to have KEDIT sort the information by date. When the date is displayed using a two-digit year, earlier versions of KEDIT see files dated in 20xx as being older than files dated in 19xx. This has been corrected in KEDIT 5.0 Service Level 4, and in KEDIT for Windows 1.5 Service Level 2 or later.

KEXX Macro Language Functions

The KEXX macro language has several built-in functions that let macro writers query dates and handle date conversion:

KEXX DATE() function

The DATE() function returns the current date in various formats, some involving two-digit years and some involving four-digit years. By default, the date is returned in the format 'dd Mmm yyyy', for example '12 Aug 1998'. The DATE() function behaves identically in all versions of KEDIT 5.0 and KEDIT for Windows,

KEXX DATECONV() function

The DATECONV() function, which macro writers can use to convert between different date formats, is included in KEDIT for Windows, but is not available in KEDIT 5.0.

One change has been made to the DATECONV() function, affecting KEDIT for Windows 1.5 Service Level 2 or later: When DATECONV() is used to convert a date that is specified using a 2-digit year, earlier versions of KEDIT for Windows assume that the date falls in the current century. DATECONV() now assumes that the date falls within a 100 year sliding window starting at (current year - 50) and ending at (current year + 49).

For example, in 1998, KEDIT for Windows 1.5 Service Level 2 or later converts 2-digit years to 4-digit years in the range 1948-2047. So, in 1998, with

DATECONV('12/17/02','U', 'N')

older versions of KEDIT for Windows yield '16 Dec 1902', while Version 1.5 Service Level 2 or later yields '16 Dec 2002'.

KEXX DOSDIR() function

The DOSDIR() function, which returns directory information about files on disk, is included in KEDIT for Windows, but is not available in KEDIT 5.0.

One piece of information that can be returned by DOSDIR() is the date that a file was last written to. In early versions of KEDIT for Windows, DOSDIR() returned the date in the form 'mm/dd/yy'. Beginning with KEDIT for Windows 1.5 Service Level 2, the date is returned in the form 'mm/dd/yyyy'.

KEXX TIME.1(), TIME.3(), and TIME.5() functions

TIME.1(), also accessible via the EXTRACT /TIME/ command and displayed on the screen in response to the QUERY TIME command, is a rarely-used function that returns the current date in country-dependent format, using two digits for the year.

TIME.3(), also accessible via the EXTRACT /TIME/ command, is a rarely-used function that returns the current date in the form mm-dd-yy. TIME.3() has been corrected as of KEDIT 5.0 Service Level 4 and KEDIT for Windows 1.5 Service Level 2 or later to return the year correctly; earlier versions of KEDIT yielded incorrect results for TIME.3() beginning in the year 2000.

TIME.5(), also accessible via the EXTRACT /TIME/ command, is new as of KEDIT 5.0 Service Level 4 and KEDIT for Windows 1.5 Service Level 2. It returns the current date in the form yyyy-mm-dd.