Re: Assignment of ARG_VAL in Informix 6.0

steve, Steve, I ran your little bit of code using informix 4.00 and 5.0 engine and it does crash on the assignment with FORMS statement error number -1218. String to date conversion error so my guess is that you have a WHENEVER ERROR routine being called which is trapping the error for you. One way of validating that you did get a date passed is to code a WHENEVER ERROR CONTINUE, do the assignment, then check to see if the variable IS NULL and finally turn the error handling back on. I have added a couple of lines to your little code fragment. MAIN DEFINE l_date DATE WHENEVER ERROR CONTINUE LET l_date = ARG_VAL(1) IF l_date IS NULL THEN DISPLAY "INVALID DATE PASSED" END IF END MAIN This now traps for the situation where a text string is passed as ARG_VAL or even when an invalid date is passed like 34-01-96 for example. The target variable l_date is null when the assignment fails. Hope this helps -- Cheers Phone: 0131-479-1271 sandys EMail: sandys@easter.euro.csg.mot.com "Let it be secret and sudden" Sir James Dalrymple, 20 January 1692.