Easier

Applescript:

on sixDigitDateCode()
   set dateFormatter to current application's NSDateFormatter's alloc()'s init()
   set todaysDate to current application's NSDate's |date|()
   set codes to {"MM", "dd", "yy"}
   set dateStr to ""
   repeat with code in codes
       (dateFormatter's setLocalizedDateFormatFromTemplate:code)
       set dateComponent to (dateFormatter's stringFromDate:todaysDate) as text
       set dateStr to dateStr & dateComponent
   end repeat
   return dateStr
end sixDigitDateCode

Still easier

Applescript:

on sixDigitDateCode()
   set dateFormatter to current application's NSDateFormatter's alloc()'s init()
   set todaysDate to current application's NSDate's |date|()
   set dateFormatter's dateFormat to "MMddyy"
   return (dateFormatter's stringFromDate:todaysDate) as text
end sixDigitDateCode

lowercase y is crucial because uppercase Y represents year in "Week of Year" based calendars.

Last edited by StefanK (2016-10-14 02:34:03 pm)

Can you explain how/where this was happening? It sounds an odd thing.

I guess you need such a thing, but anyone with memories of the Y2K debacle will suggest such things are far better avoided.

Applescript:

set dateFormatter's dateFormat to "MMddyy"

btw I didn't know you could set class properties in this way in ASOC. Is this new?

It's not new -- but IMO it's not a particularly good idea. For one thing, it doesn't always work; for another, there can be subtle class issues, especially if you also use it to retrieve properties. It essentially uses key-value coding, which bypasses the scripting bridge's normal way of converting to and from AppleScript and Objective-C based on signatures and property definitions.

So would this be better, or equally undesirable?

Applescript:

dateFormatter's setDateFormat:("MMddyy")

That's what I'd use (maybe without the parentheses, but that's probably just a typing thing).

Are you sure the intermittent error you were getting wasn't a slash between the two year digits?

You have this line:

That makes a two-character list, and then coerces it to a string. What you end up with depends on the value of text item delimiters at the time; if you've set them to a slash somewhere else in your code, without resetting them to the default, you'd get a slash inserted between the digits.

The better way to extract a substring is:

Applescript:

set dateComp to text 3 thru 4 of dateComp

which is also more efficient, because there's no list created.