Patent ID: 7426714

Claim:
A method performed on a computing device, comprising: receiving a date input as an expression having one or more components and one or more parameters that modify the value of a particular component of the expression, the expression to establish and manipulate a target date in order to determine a resultant date, wherein the one or more components include a target date component, a primary component, a segmenting component, and an offset component, and wherein each component is defined by an identifier associated with one or more parameters qualifying the respective component; determining if a date-effecting condition is associated with the expression by examining each of the primary component, segmenting component, and the offset component in order to determine the date-effecting condition, wherein the target date component is used to specify an initial target date as a starting point of the resultant date, wherein the primary component is used to specify a secondary input date to reference the target date against, wherein the segmenting component is used to explicitly segment time based on one or more parameters and a date returned the target date component and the primary component, and wherein the offset component is used to set off by a fixed amount a date value of at least one of the target date component, primary component, and the segmenting component; and modifying the target date based upon the date-effecting condition in order to generate the resultant date, wherein an identifier of each component defines a constant value, variable value, and/or symbol to indicate a type of the associated parameters, and wherein one or more parameters associated with the identifier of each component are used to specify how the respective component can be used.