Force 2 digit month, 2 digit days and 4 digit year.

Question

I have input date format month/day/year. 
The possible input may be like following:
  1/1/2006, 1/12/2006,
10/1/2006, 10/12/2006.
in summay the 'day' may be 1 or 2 digit, the 'month' may be 1 or 2 digit.
How do I make them all 2 digit 'day', 2 digit 'month' and 4 digit year.  My final goal is convert it to 'YYYYMMDD'.
Here is my code:
TYPES :BEGIN OF type_int_date,
            l_year(4)   TYPE c,
            l_month(2)  TYPE c,
            l_days(2)   TYPE c,
          END OF type_int_date.
DATA:l_startdate    TYPE string,
     l_month        TYPE string,
     l_days         TYPE string,
     l_year(4)      TYPE c,
     lw_date        TYPE type_int_date,
     l_len TYPE i.
SPLIT l_startdate AT '/' INTO
          l_month
          l_days
          l_year.
    l_len = <b>strlen</b>(l_month).
    IF l_len = 1.
       CONCATENATE '0' l_month INTO lw_int_date-l_month.
    l_len = strlen(l_day).
    IF l_len = 1.
       CONCATENATE '0' l_days INTO lw_int_date-l_days.
    lw_int_date-l_year = l_year.
    zzstartdate = lw_int_date.
I have syntax error on the 'strlen'.  The compiler do not understand the 'strlen'.
Please help.
Thanks,
Helen

Answer 1

Please implement my sample program above, run it?  Any problems? If so, then I guess that you user date format is set as MM.DD.YYYY.  Which in this case will not work for you.  Neil has suggest that you translate the / to .  This may work, again, if your user date format is MM.DD.YYYY.
report zrich_0001.
data: im_datum(10) type c value '1/1/2006'.
data: ex_datum type sy-datum.
<b>translate im_datum using '/.'.</b>
call function 'CONVERT_DATE_TO_INTERNAL'
     exporting
          date_external = im_datum
     importing
          date_internal = ex_datum.
write:/ ex_datum.
REgards,
Rich Heilman