IBM DOS/VS COBOL has a CURRENT-DATE register that contains the current date in either MM/DD/YY or DD/MM/YY format, where MM is the month (01 for January, 02 for February, etc.), DD is the day of the month, and YY is the last two digits of the year. Leading zeros are used where necessary to ensure two-digit values. For example, November 2, 2000 is expressed as either 11/02/00 or 02/11/00. This register is valid only as the source of a MOVE statement without conversion.
When ACUCOBOL-GT is in the IBM DOS/VS COBOL compatibility mode, CURRENT-DATE may be used as the source of a Format 1 MOVE statement:
MOVE CURRENT-DATE TO {dest-item} ...
If there are two or more destination items in the same MOVE statement, all are guaranteed to receive the same value, even if the clock ticks and midnight passes while the statement is being processed.
As usual, the value is truncated or padded with blanks at the right end to make it fit into the destination.
The runtime configuration variable CURRENT-DATE determines which format to use. If this variable is "0", which is the default condition, MM/DD/YY is used. If this variable is "1", DD/MM/YY is used. Other values produce undefined results.