9/9/99 should pass quietly

By Nick Stanley

People are unlikely to hear about disruptions caused by computer glitches on Thursday, 9/9/99, says an IT expert.

Ross Stewart, who is director of the IT personnel company Wilson White and runs the web site www.year2000.co.nz, said he expected there would be a few problems, but they would be so minor and easily fixed that "embarrassed" IT departments would not report them.

He said it was unlikely that any computer would confuse four nines in a row for an end-of-file (EOF) marker that would command it to stop a certain function or perform a special task.

In over 30 years in the IT industry, Mr Stewart had never known cases of programmers using that combination of numbers as an EOF marker.

He said he had never heard of anyone being stupid enough to use 990909 as a marker, but had come across 999999 or 991231.

After publishing comments on the year2000 web site, he had been contacted by people in the industry who knew of cases where 9999 had been used.

Software problems had been identified where 9/9/99 was used in data-entry as a fictional future date to fill a date field.

Certain systems, such as those used in insurance and banking, had compulsory date fields and 9/9/99 was a quick entry.

However, Mr Stewart said most companies had set up editing programmes to change such dates.

Other "funny" problems relating to the performance of hardware had been identified.

In one instance, a building's security control system would have failed on Thursday, unlocking all the doors for the whole day.

Paul Wilton, the Auckland City Council's Y2K coordinator, said 9/9/99 was a "historical issue."

Older systems containing an outdated programming convention that used 9999 to indicate an error might experience some problems.

"It's not inconceivable that people brought the convention forward or used the convention late enough that systems are still in operation that have the convention.

"Organisations that have up-to-date, recent systems are unlikely to be affected."

Mr Wilton said most companies should have picked up the problem during Y2K testing.