International Date Format
International Date FormatThe International Date Format, ISO 8601.
is CCYY-MM-DD.
See the "Campaign to get the Internet World to use the International Date Format" at http://www.saqqara.demon.co.uk/datefmt.htm
If only we all used the InternationalDateFormat, then we wouldn't have suffered from...
Why don't we just spell out the names of the months? That would remove most opportunities for confusion. (Don't get me wrong, I'm from that small part of the world that actually uses the same date order as the InternationalDateFormat). -- AndersBengtsson
Because it's easier for us to agree on where the month goes than it is for us to agree whose language to use for the month.
What about the language of the user? ;)
Because the goal of ISO 8601 is to produce a standard human-readable date format that programs can easily read and write.
And month names don't sort in any useful way...
Maybe we should change the month names!
I propose these:
But see RFC 2550 "Y10K and Beyond" [1 April 1999] at http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2550.txt
I really like their y*MMDD format, thanks for posting the RFC. I've had a y10k web page for several years. http://humu.ucsd.edu/~garrod/y10k/ ChrisGarrod 20060622.1723 Grok that. I work with an international group of scientists, and they grok it quickly in their own language.
Another advantage of this format is that it sorts properly as text. Thus, if there are import or conversion difficulties and type info gets mixed up or lost, one can use a text-based sort and still get the right order.
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(last edited June 30, 2008)
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