The DateSeparator is defined in sysinth.inc as

Const
   { Character to be put between date, month and year }
   DateSeparator: char = '-';
   { Format used for short date notation }
   ShortDateFormat: string = 'd/m/y';
   { Format used for long date notation }
   LongDateFormat: string = 'dd" "mmmm" "yyyy';

Which means if I try to display something in the "standard" American format of mm/dd/yyy using:

FormatDate('mm/dd/yyyy',mydate)

I end up with "mm-dd-yyyy". The / gets replaced with the DateSeparator constant. Since it's an FPC constant, I can't easily change this.

Basically, this makes every date format function useless for me.

I see a note above it that says use InitInternational to set this, but that procedure seems to do nothing of the sort.

Can we not change all the defines in sysinth.inc to VAR instead of CONST so they could be manipulated by the programmer?

-Tony Maro

As said on IRC, I suspect this is a 1.0.10 issue. (1.9.x bootstrapping with 1.0.x I mean), since IIRC 1.0.x doesn't support

 var x : tx = vx;
syntax;

{ Format used for short date notation } ShortDateFormat: string = 'd/m/y';

Strange. That's not european at all? d-m-y or dd.mm.yy

Right, but I'm suggesting it go ahead and be changed in 1.9.x... would this cause other problems?

True, but with the const dateseparator, it results in d-m-y of course ;-)

-Tony

Even if it is a const, it is a typed constant and to those constants you can assign:
ShortDateFormat := 'm/d/y';

HTH,
Vincent.

As you can see it is a typed const, which means you can set it to any character you like. To solve your problems, set it to '/' at program startup, and you should be fine.

Same for the other constants.

I have thousands of lines of code, which frequently set it to various values. Never had a problem.

The reason it is a const is that initialized variables are not supported in 1.0.X, but typed constants (which are the same as initialized variables) are...

Michael.

Ah... okay. So just a lack of knowledge on my part.

Thanks guys,
Tony