I tried what you recommended and got the following error: Error Type: AttributeError Error Value: __getslice__ The problem I think is that the variable is drawn from the database as type date (Microsoft Access 2k) and somehow is cast into a date type. Is there a way to re-cast this variable as a string type? Or is there another reason it's not working (I've tried it with my other varibles pulled from the database in the same query and it's only the date types that are giving this error, all other variables work fine)? I also tried the <dtml-var "_.string.split(start_date, '/')[1]"> solution but got the error: Error Type: TypeError Error Value: argument 1: expected read-only character buffer, instance found Thanks very much for everyone's help so far! Mike Kelland mike@studiomatic.com ----- Original Message ----- From: "Spicklemire, Jerry" <Jerry.Spicklemire@IFLYATA.COM> To: <mike@studiomatic.com> Cc: <zope@zope.org> Sent: Monday, December 04, 2000 4:38 PM Subject: [Zope] string splitting in dtml

Mike asked:

...

I have a date string (ie dd/mm/yy) which I'm drawing out of a database (ODBC connection to Access) with a Z SQL method and I need to use that data to set the initial condition of a set of 3 select items (ie day, month and year). Is there a way to split this date (it'll come out looking like dd/mm/yy) to get the components of it

You could use the Python "string slice" syntax, like so:

<dtml-let day_of_month="_['start_date'][:2]" month_of_year="_['start_date'][3:5]" year_of_century="_['start_date'][6:8]"> The <dtml-var day_of_month> day,<br> of the <dtml-var month_of_year> month,<br> of the year 20<dtml-var month_of_century><br> </dtml-let>

Later, Jerry S.

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