I've seen this topic discussed numerous times in the past, but now that I need it again, I'm having trouble finding it...

I have a client that absolutely hates entering delimiters when entering a date. That is, she wants to enter four digits or six digits, with no separator, and have the db interpret this as a valid date.

It seems that I need to attach a calculation to the date field that parses the numbers entered using, say, the Left function and/or the Middle function and derive a valid date from the numeric-only entry.

I would need to attach such a calculation to every occurrence of a Date field.

Does this sound like a correct way to do this?

You need an input field that accepts the date as mmddyyyy an a calculated date field = Date(Left( Input; 2); Middle (Input; 3; 2); Right (input; 2)). You could define this a new function if you have a lot of date fields. You may want to overlay the fields so the date field shows.

If In understand correctly, I need a total of two fields for each instance of a date input: one that accepts the numbers mmddyyyy and also the actual date field that interprets the other field, through a calculation, to derive a valid date. If, however, I want to, I can define this calculation as a new function that I called from everywhere I need it instead of entering the calculation each time.

Correct?

Yes, that's the idea.

Many thanks!