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On Tuesday, November 12, 2002, at 02:47 PM, Paul Hirose wrote:

> I suggest something like 5 Sep 2002 or Sept. 5, 2002 or 2002 September
> 5. Any of these would eliminate the possibility for confusion. The
> last one is the astronomer's style and that's what the Almanac uses.
> It's the most logical in my opinion.
>
> If we're going to use a numeric notation, the ISO 8601 standard would
> be a good idea, e.g. 2002-09-05.
>
> Standards for representing date and time are discussed here:
> http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/datefmts.htm

I agree!  The ISO 8601 standard is nice because you can sort on this
just using ASCII ordering and it will do a chronological sort.  If you
have months spelled out then you have to write intelligent sort
routines in the computer world.

Another nice logical part to this ordering is that it goes from large
units of time (years) down to the smallest units of time.  If time is
appended, this moment is written "2002-11-12 15:13:34" in this ISO 8601
format, so one can be less precise by just starting to omit from the
right the seconds, and then the minutes, and then the hours, etc.

Having said all that I like the 5 Sep 2002 style as well.  It is
interesting to note that I am seeing this more and more in the US for
no particular reason other than many of us are confused by 9/5/2002 vs
5/9/2002 and the ambiguity therein.

Dan

   

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