Re: 9/9/1999

[Philip Hands <phil@hands.com>]

> On Mon, Aug 10, 1998 at 09:43:29AM -0600, vaidhy@wwdg.com wrote:
> > > The reason I write you is because I'm curious: What would you expect to happen
> > > on 9/9/1999? (I can't think of any reason why this date is special).
> > 
> > I think the problem is that a lot of mainframe software like backup etc, have set the expiry date as 9/9/1999 (ie: 9/9/99). 
> 
> Also 9/9/99 aka 9999 was sometimes used as end of record/file/whatever.

Is that actually true (i.e. does anyone have any real reports of that) or is 
this just a pointy-haired panic attack, resulting from the use of the ``date''
99/99/99 as a delimiter ?

I mean, 9/9/99 is in fact 09/09/99, which does not seem like an obvious choice 
for a delimiter, even after excessive exposure to COBOL ;-)

It wouldn't surprise me if someone made up the 9/9/99 story, to help sell 
millennium-arse-covering-software

Cheers, Phil.