MIN(A,B) instead of CASE WHEN in saved search formula?

We keep hitting the character limit for SQL formulas in saved searches. It seems that the issue is often inefficiency of the formula, and often this is due to us wanting the keep only the minimum value from two or three separate expressions...

For example I want to simply write
MINIMUM(A,B)

Instead I end up writing
(CASE WHEN A<B THEN A ELSE B END)

Which is fine, except that A and B are not simply a single character variable, in one of the formulas I use the part that constitutes the above is shown below....


CASE WHEN (to_char({custbody_associatedcontract.custrecord_rencbd}, 'YYYYMM')*1)>(to_char({custbody_associatedcontract.custrecord_end}, 'YYYYMM')*1))) THEN (to_char({custbody_associatedcontract.custrecord_end}, 'YYYYMM')*1) ELSE  ((to_char({custbody_associatedcontract.custrecord_smallerrendate}, 'YYYYMM'))