Hi Frank,

> So, in the original question setting ShortDateFormat to
> 'dd-mmm-yyy' should do the job.

But it should not be necessary to do this as it is initialised from
the operating system settings during startup. This is demonstrated by
the fact the date was displayed as required - it just could not be
edited using this format.

To requote the Delphi online help...
"must consist of two or three numbers, separated by the character
defined by the DateSeparator global variable. The order for month,
day, and year is determined by the ShortDateFormat global
variable--possible combinations are m/d/y, d/m/y, and y/m/d. "

Notice that the VCL conversion routines only use the ShortDateFormat
to determine what order to expect the values - it does mean that it
will accept names for the month.

Are you saying that your copy of the VCL will accept '02-Mar-2001' in
its StrToDate routine? (If so which version are you using?)

I know that my copy of Delphi5 will not accept this form of date input
into the StrToDate routine. So unless we update IBO to accept such
date strings, it will be necessary for the users to input the date in
numeric form. You can do whatever you like for display, but IMO it is
better to display in the same format that you wanted entered (it is
more intuitive for the user). In which case you need to either change
the ShortDateFormat global, or setup a DisplayFormat for the
field/domain.


Geoff Worboys
Telesis Computing