Year Two Thousand One Bug

The year 2001 is the first year since 1931 when a 2-digit year could be confused with a day of the month. It's the first time since 1912 that a 2-digit year could be confused with a month.

So, what is "01/02/03"? Is it January 2nd, 2003, February 3rd, 2001, or something else? (Six possible interpretations.)


I recently encountered some code that tried and failed to convert "YY/MM/DD" data based on a "MM/DD/YY" format, from 1995 to 2000. Ironically, it always produced the correct result, because its error processing always silently reverted to the previously formatted data, which was correct. Now that "01/01/17" (January 17th, 2001) can be interpreted with the "MM/DD/YY" format (as January 1st, 2017), the program produces incorrect results... starting January 2nd, 2001.


See also InternationalDateFormat.


CategoryBug


EditText of this page (last edited November 2, 2004) or FindPage with title or text search