Display number as Date in report

Question

Hi,
We are getting the date info in the format ddmmyyyy and have to map it in the number field. I want to show this date info in the report as dd/mm/yyyy.
For example, if the date is 10072009 (10th July 2009), it should be displayed as 10/07/2009 in the report.
I tried to
a) CAST the number to string, but that was not allowed.
b) First cast the number to integer and then cast it to character. But when I used RIGHT function to get the last 4 characters, it did not return any values.
Any suggestions how to approach this?
Ady

Answer 1

Hi,
You can do this using CAST and String functions.
Here is an example of the formula- note that I'm using Account Revenue as the base, this can be replaced by any number, integer or currency field:
LEFT(CAST(Account."Annual Revenue" AS CHAR), 2) || '/' || INSERT(SUBSTRING(CAST(Account."Annual Revenue" AS CHAR) FROM 3),3,0,'/')
Refer to the online help for full descriptions and usage of the various functions:
LEFT - clips off the first few characters
INSERT - adds chars to a string
SUBSTRING - clips off the last few characters
CAST - convert from one type to another
|| - double pipe is concatenation
Your error may have been trying to Cast to String - there is no "String" type, CHAR serves the same purpose.