Date, numeric and monetary formats

This section describes how Genero BDL handles date, time, numeric and monetary formats.

Dates, numbers and monetary values must be displayed and entered in a format used in the country/region. These formats can be defined with the DBDATE and DBFORMAT environment variables.

Date and numeric format settings matter for data display and data input. For example, when displaying a DATE value to a form field, it will implicitly be formatted by the DBDATE setting. When the user enters a date in a form field bound to a DATE variable, the entered digits will be interpreted by the DBDATE format.

The default values of these environment variables depend on the type of platform where the program executes:
  • On desktop/server platforms, the default formats are set for the United States of America:
    • Dates are formatted as mm/dd/yyyy.
    • The decimal separator is a dot.
    • The currency symbol is the dollar sign ($).
  • On mobile platforms, the default formats are set from the regional settings defined on the device.
    • Dates are formatted depend on the regional settings.
    • The decimal separator is defined depend on the regional settings.
    • The currency symbol is not defined. No currency symbol will display.

    While it is possible to define environment settings for date and numeric formats with FGLPROFILE entries, it is strongly recommended to leave the defaults, so as to get the expected formats if the user changes the regional settings on the mobile device.

When using the FORMAT field attribute or the USING operator to format dates with abbreviated day and month names- by using ddd / mmm markers - the system uses English-language based texts for the conversion. This means, day (ddd) and month (mmm) abbreviations are not localized depending on the locale settings, they will always be in English.