>I must say I'm a little disappointed at the muted reaction to my
>revelation of "English Fudge". Still, that's given me a little time to
>refine it. ;-) As posted yesterday:

Oh, dear! Here's a handler which uses the newest technique for
everyone to put into their date/time libraries. It returns the
current month number or the month number of the date it was passed.
Because the date conversion is so smart you can throw anything at it.
Typical uses:

monthNumber(October) -- convert class month to number

monthNumber(0) -- return current month number
monthNumber({}) -- return current month number
monthNumber("") -- return current month number

monthNumber("Feb") -- convert string to number
monthNumber("23/6") -- convert string to number
monthNumber("5 Feb") -- convert string to number


on monthNumber(theDate)
        -- obtain the month number from a date
        -- returns current month when date theDate doesn't work
        -- eg, monthnumber(0) --> returns current month number
        -- parameters:  anything
        -- French Vanilla / English Fudge
        -- Emmanuel / Nigel Garvey
        -- May 2003
        try
                set theDate to date (theDate as string)
        on error --
                set theDate to the current date
        end try

        copy theDate to b
        set b's month to January
        return (b - 2500000 - theDate) div -2500000
end monthNumber

--
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Malcolm Fitzgerald                        [log in to unmask]
Database Manager                          http://www.asauthors.org
The Australian Society of Authors         ph: 02 93180877 fax: 02 93180530