5 ms·
The spec permits more than 4 digits for 'year' by mutual agreement. This is called 'expanded representation'. There is no limit to the number of digits, but par
by cmclaren 5y ago
The spec permits more than 4 digits for 'year' by mutual agreement. This is called 'expanded representation'. There is no limit to the number of digits, but parties need to agree on how many additional digits will be used to avoid ambiguous representations.
Consider that +002021001 could represent:
a) "Oct 1, 202" as a calendar date (proleptic Gregorian), in 'basic' format (i.e. no "-" separator), 5 digits for year.
b) "Jan 1, 2021" as an ordinal date, 'basic' format (i.e. no "-" separator), 6 digits for year.
- amelius 5y agoI wonder how useful more than 4 digits would be. Once our species has achieved interstellar travel, we'll probably use a completely different representation for time.
- pdw 5y agoSome musea need more than 4 digits to describe their collection...
- amelius 5y agoYeah, but they also need a minus sign.
- cmclaren 5y agoBy default, ISO 8601-1:2019 does not permit negative years in date representations. Expanded representation (i.e. five digits or more for the year) permits both positive and negative years (and the sign is mandatory for both positive and negative years). ISO 8601-2:2019 has provisions for numeric extensions. Subclause 4.4.1.2 permits negative four-digit years (years -9999 to -0001). Note that both of these options require mutual agreement.
- ethbr0 5y ago> Once our species has achieved interstellar travel, we'll probably use a completely different representation for time. All experience thus far suggests "No." We'll be using all of these formats, plus some new ones.
- TheCoelacanth 5y agoWhat date formats from 8000 years ago are still in use?
- ethbr0 5y agoSolstice and equinox-relative seasons?
- Klaster_1 5y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24453612 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24453612
- neoeno 5y agoOne use: I was teaching some developers COBOL, and I wanted to illustrate for them how the Y2K bug came about. So I gave them a project to do parsing a file with contemporary dates in. Then towards the end I quietly supplied them with a similar file containing dates from the year 10000+. Whether or not the devs of years past felt it similarly unlikely that their software would live to the year 2000 as we do the year 10000, I don’t know. But it was a fun exercise!
- heavenlyblue 5y agoDon’t forget that when Y2K problems were being created the hardware was _way_ less performant than the hardware of today. There was a reason to be wary of how much memory you are using, now there isn’t much.