The MONTHABBRLEN option specifies the number of characters to use for abbreviations of month names that are stored in the MONTHNAMES option. You can specify how many characters to use for abbreviating particular month names when you specify the <MT>, <MTXT>, and <MTXTL> formats with the DATEFORMAToption or a VNF (value name format) specified for a dimension of type dimensions of type DAY, WEEK, MONTH, QUARTER, or YEAR.
MONTHABBRLEN = specification [;|, specification]...
where specification is a text expression that has the following form:
startpos [ - endpos] : length
Numbers that represent the first and last months whose abbreviation length is defined by length. These numeric positions apply to the corresponding lines of text in the MONTHNAMES option. You can specify these ranges of values in reverse order, endpos [-startpos], if you prefer.
The MONTHNAMES option can have more than 12 lines, so you can specify startpos and endpos greater than 12 in the setting of MONTHABBRLEN. When you specify a range where neither startpos nor endpos has a corresponding text value in the MONTHNAMES option, MONTHABBRLEN has no text values to abbreviate for that range. When you later change your month names list so that startpos is valid, the specified abbreviation is applied.
A number that specifies the length in characters (not bytes) of abbreviated month names. When you do not specify an abbreviation length for a given position in the MONTHNAMES option, or when you explicitly set a given position to zero, the default abbreviation is used. The default abbreviations are one character for <MT> and three characters for <MTXT> and <MTXTL>. Abbreviations are never used when you have designated the full name specifications <MTEXT> and <MTEXTL>.
You can use MONTHABBRLEN to interpret ambiguous names, for example, whether A stands for April or August. When the MONTHABBRLEN for April was 1 and for August was 2, then A would always match April, and it would require at least Au to match August. This interpretation does not depend on the order of April and August in the year; it would work the same way when the two months were reversed. If, on the other hand, the MONTHABBRLEN for each of these was 2, then A would not match either one, and you would have to enter at least Ap or Au to get a match.
Example 5-64 Specifying Month Abbreviations
The following MONTHABBRLEN setting specifies that the first 10 months of the year are abbreviated to one character and the last 2 months are abbreviated to two characters.
MONTHABBRLEN = '1-10:1, 11-12:2'
SHOW CONVERT ('2 August 2005' DATE)
These statements product the following result, with August abbreviated to the letter A.
02A05