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Number   :  4403
Date     :  2003-04-21
Author   :  Kan Yabumoto
Subject  :  Re: Date Macro
Size(KB) :  3



Doug:

Currently, XXCOPY's macro feature has no provisions for
the control of leading zero for /$mm$ or /$dd$ items.

The format that you need to work with seems especially
poorly conceived format.

1. it creates variable-length name.

2. inconsistent in handling the leading zero
(the format insists on having a leading zero on the
years of this decade).

3. The US-convention is not as logical as the ISO-8601
standard (where the year comes first).

I believe we provide sufficient flexibility on what we
offer in the macro.

This is a borderline case where it's hard to say whether
the potential collective benefits by the users of this
new added flexibility outweigh the burden of having to read
the extra documentation for minor variations. In my opinion,
to support an obviously-ill-conceived scheme ( which
should be corrected at the other end) propagates a bad
habit in the society and our products even contribute
to a scheme which should be condemned to die away.
(I'm a very adamant believer of the ISO-8601 scheme and
hate the U.S. date-order convention).

So, while it is not technically difficult to support
the scheme that gives convenience to you (provided
we come up with a reasonable and easy-to-remember
notation ---- usually a bigger headache there which
would not collide the current keyword set (and would not
stifle our freedom to add future extension of the set of
macro keywords). In this case, we could simply designate
a new "US-only" macro reference which stands for
your /$m-d-yy$ scheme, but it would be totally unfair
to European users who would equally argue for /$d-m-yy$
(or, /$d.m.yy$ and so on). The logical way is
to give a variation to each of /$mm$ and /$dd$ for
non-leading-zero case. I just can't think of a clean
designation for that... Can you suggest some? It
has to be clean, easy-to-remember, and not-very-long.

Having said that, being in business, we take a kind of
"mercenary" attitude. At the end of the day, we can
swallow any of our personal agenda for potential
license revenue. Can you spell out your company's budget
for near-term software licensing?

Kan Yabumoto
=============================================================

At 2003-04-21 11:56, you wrote:
>Yan -
>
>I need some help (or anyone that has a clue).
>
>I am using the Data Macro to create directory names while copying
>files. It happens to be that the application we are copying files
>using the following format for the folder names.
>
>4-21-03 or 11-22-03 etc. The key issue here is the padded zeros
>that XXcopy performs.
>
>Basically I need to grab files from a folder that gets cleaned out
>daily. In the pass we simply copied the files from the folders the
>system had created that were already named 4-21-03. XXCopy would
>simply copy the folders completely and I had no problems. But it
>seems the files are not the same quaility (digital images) as the
>files in the initial folder that is cleaned out daily and does not
>have the directory structure. Here is a sample of what we are doing.
>
>xxcopy sourcedir t:\/$mm-dd-yy$ /tm-1 blah blah blah
>
>As you see the folder I create is based on the current date minus 1
>day. This is perfect. EXCEPT for the PADDED ZEROES.
>
>This is because we also copy the directories that the system
>creates. Those folders are in the format 4-2-03. Therefore if I
>have no way to remove those padded zeroes I end up getting duplicate
>files.
>
>Any ideas on how to fix this issue. Renaming the directories is not
>a choice as all of this is automated and we cannot babysit the
>process.
>
>Thanks
>
>Doug



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