Program security: Stop working after specific date

[Iznogoud]

Good day,

I have a question about securing my programs.

I want to secure my program's so other people won't redistribute it or use it for personal gain.

To do so i was wondering how and the simple and easiest way is i think to check against a specific date.

For an example:

$DATE=@MDAY & @MON & @YEAR
If $DATE > 01012009 Then
    MsgBox(4096,"", "Value is positive.")
ElseIf $DATE < 0 Then
    MsgBox(4096,"", "Value is negative.")
EndIf

But the value will always be possible, so what am i missing from this o simple script?

The date when the program will stop working is in this example 01012009.

Sorry for this noob question but i am missing something and i am not seeing it.

[evilertoaster]

thinks about it, your date variable will be 25021008 ( 25 02 2008) if it's ran today. This is indeed a higher number than 1012009 ( 01 12 2009).

The date managment UDF might provide some more helpfull functions for date handling. But in particular, if you are comparing an interger, you'll probably want to do it in a yyyymmdd order so that 20090101 ( 2009 01 01) is greater than 20080101 (2008 01 01).

Edited February 25, 2008 by evilertoaster

[Paulie]

It would be better to compare each individually, because with you method, 01012009 (january 1 2009) would be less than 09092010 (sept. 9 2008) which is actually a later date

My solution

$Cutoff = "01|01|2009"; D|M|Y
$Date = StringSplit($Cutoff, "|")
If @MDAY >= $Date[1] then
If @MON >= $Date[2] then
If @YEAR >= $Date[3] then 
Msgbox(0, "Expired", "Sorry, your trial has expired.")
Exit
EndIf
EndIf
EndIf

Edit: Forgot quotes

Edited February 25, 2008 by Paulie

[Iznogoud]

thinks about it, your date variable will be 25021008 ( 25 02 2008) if it's ran today. This is indeed a higher number than 1012009 ( 01 12 2009).

The date managment UDF might provide some more helpfull functions for date handling. But in particular, if you are comparing an interger, you'll probably want to do it in a yyyymmdd order so that 20090101 ( 2009 01 01) is greater than 20080101 (2008 01 01).

Sorry my bad, if i just made the time to write it down i think i would see the problem. Sorry for my stupidty.

I know better.

It would be better to compare each individually, because with you method, 01012009 (january 1 2009) would be less than 09092010 (sept. 9 2008) which is actually a later date

My solution

$Cutoff = "01|01|2009"; D|M|Y
$Date = StringSplit($Cutoff, "|")
If @MDAY >= $Date[1] then
If @MON >= $Date[2] then
If @YEAR >= $Date[3] then 
Msgbox(0, "Expired", "Sorry, your trial has expired.")
Exit
EndIf
EndIf
EndIf

Edit: Forgot quotes

Thank you for this and i will try this for myself.