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I don't even know why anyone still uses this notation in today's connected world. 2020-08-06 is ideal. Russian standard (06.08.2020) is uglier (digits are not s
by owl57 6y ago
I don't even know why anyone still uses this notation in today's connected world. 2020-08-06 is ideal. Russian standard (06.08.2020) is uglier (digits are not sorted by significance) but still unambiguous. But that slash horror? Why would anyone continue inflicting this on themselves and their peers!?
- sixdimensional 6y agoISO8601
- spuz 6y agoHow is "06.08.2020" unambiguous?
- owl57 6y agoDoes anyone use mm.dd.yyyy?
- brummm 6y agoGermany does. Probably the majority of Europe too
- eitland 6y agoI think you misread: most of mainland Europe including Germany use dd.mm.yyyy or something else that is reasonable sane even if it isn't sortable like yyyy-mm-dd. Or am I wrong on this? Norway at least use mm.dd.yyyy and never mm/dd or mm.dd.yyyy
- lioeters 6y ago> The format dd.mm.yyyy using dots is the traditional German date format. > Since 1996-05-01, the international format yyyy-mm-dd has become the official standard date format https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_format_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_format_by_country
- arrrg 6y agoSchools still teach DD.MM.YYYY. That’s what’s relevant because that’s what people actually widely use. Shouldn’t Americans be very familiar with the idea that official norms (the metric system) play no role if the people don’t want to use them?
- lioeters 6y agoI understand - it seems I was too optimistic to read that the use of yyyy-mm-dd has become "the official standard" in Germany, without considering the popular usage and convention under discussion.
- pintxo 6y agoAfaik Norway also uses the sane format: DD.MM.YYYY See parent source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_format_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_format_by_country
- eitland 6y agoEdit: of course. To late to edit but if you read my post, but that was what I meant.
- tremon 6y agoThere are no conventions that write a date as mm.dd.yyyy, so if you encounter a date in that format, it is safe to assume dd.mm.yyyy. Contrast this with the slash or dash notation, where both mm/dd/yyyy and dd/mm/yyyy are prevalent in the world. But 2020-08-06 is unambiguous in the same way that 06.08.2020 is: the only convention in common use is yyyy-mm-dd.
- fnbr 6y agoUnfortunately, this isn’t true in Canada. MDY is very common, especially in the English parts. See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_format_by_country https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_format_by_country
- FabHK 6y agoMDY separated by dots? The link you gave does not seem to support that.
- dragonwriter 6y ago> There are no conventions that write a date as mm.dd.yyyy While slash is the most common, use of hyphens and dots as separators for US-style dates is not at all unheard of in the wild for manually formatted dates. The fact that it doesn't show up in lists of national “preferred formats” and doesn't tend to be commonly implemented as a prebaked format in software doesn't mean it's not a real thing people see and will interpret dates they see in light of.
- stjohnswarts 6y agoHow is that safe to assume??? You can't assume anything, why not ask the source of the data? The other way is to attempt to confirm which order by looking for first 2 digits > 12, but that info might not be available depending on the data.
- arrrg 6y agoSeparating dates with dots (DD.MM.YYYY) is what’s taught in school in Germany. So, yeah, there is a convention to write dates exactly that way.
- brummm 6y agoIt's unambiguous for everybody except Americans with their weird switching.
- reportgunner 6y agoyes, YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS is the only proper format. It is sorted from the greatest unit (year) to the smallest unit (second). If you treat them as text and sort alphabetically they still get sorted from oldest to newest. Other formats don't sort properly. writing dd.mm.yyyy is like writing time ss:mm:hh writing mm/dd/yyyy is like writing time mm/ss/hh If I really have to put YYYY at the end of the date I use the 'dd-mmm-yyyy' format which excel translates based on client locale: - 13-mar-2020 in enUS - 13-bře-2020 in czech
- javier123454321 6y agoagreed fully
- sneak 6y agoI suggest a literal T instead of a space, and don’t forget the timezone offset (or a literal Z). ISO 8601 is great.
- mjevans 6y agoI agree with and independently also use the parent's modification to ISO8601 with that respect; though I do frequently call the format string that contains whatever magic cookies get that output something similar to iso8601mod. (The modifications: Emit a string rather than a T, and (if included) use the email like +/-OFFSET to indicate the current timezone offset rather than specify a timezone. No offset implies UTC for system times and local time for human-facing times.)
- out_of_protocol 6y agoWell it is but the T is ugly :/
- II2II 6y agoI would argue that its use goes beyond sorting and includes people making mental estimates about time intervals. Having some sort of sensible order helps here, which I'm guessing is YMD for left to right languages and DMY for right to left languages, since that puts the most significant digits first.
- LatteLazy 6y ago>2020-08-06 I've just switched to 20200806. Let it be an int and be done with it.
- owl57 6y agoHuman readability sometimes matters.
- stjohnswarts 6y agowhat human can't parse that? Sure it might take a half a second longer but it's hardly confusing.
- gmfawcett 6y agoFor those of us whose professional lives sometimes require staring at directory listings full of filenames like "output-200003021342"... for the love of God, please just put the dashes in. I have an infinite number of dashes, I'll send you a lifetime supply!
- thaumasiotes 6y agoThe integer 20200806 is chosen solely for the purpose of human readability. If you actually wanted to store a date as an integer, you'd use the Julian day.
- gmfawcett 6y agoA beautiful property of using ints to represent dates is that you can manipulate them using simple arithmetic. For example, if you want to refer to noon-time on 20200806, you can simply divide the day in two and write it as 10100403. An elegant, DRY solution to a perennial problem.
- JackFr 6y agoIt’s beautiful. Just mod 7 to find the day of the week.
- DocG 6y agoBecause it's meant for human consumption. Day and month is usually relevant, while year is less so, so let's put it last.
- IgniteTheSun 6y agoI wish more people complied with ISO 8601. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601 Even better, wish everyone would standardize on: * YYYYMMDD for dates * YYYY-MM for months * YYYYMMDDTHHMM for time where T is the capital letter T. Two additional digits can be added for seconds and then as many additional digits as needed for precision. ------------------ [Edited for format]