Number 199 - December 1999

To Fix a Y2K Casualty--LIE!!
by Bob Thomson, Tacoma Open Group
I still use a 1980s era spreadsheet, SuperCalc 4. As I suspected, its "built-in" TODAY function didn't work when January 1, 2000 came by. This function was clearly written to recognize a two digit year code where 00 would be taken as 1900 and the "Julian Date Arithmetic" written into the function would, therefore, fail. In fact, the spreadsheet templates containing	TODAY would not load at all, displaying the cryptic message File data error. How could I "get at" these templates in order to delete the references to the TODAY function and develop a work-around? Easy. Lie to the computer! I entered 12/31/1999 as the date and was able to bring the templates up again so I could salvage them.
Number 199 - December 1999