KIRK.TYM@OFFICE-2.ARPA (Kirk Kelley) (04/04/84)
In DATETIME := DD M YY H MM Transposing YY and DD would be ok. The rationalization for persisting with the "standard" ordering is to minimize the amount needed to uniquely identify a message from a certain person in your personal monthly or yearly subset in the case where you happened to get only one message from that person that day. I SAID it was a rationalization. The original spec reveals why it is H instead of HH. The hour is represented as a single letter from A to X. For example, a message sent April 2, 1984 at 5:57 am GMT would have an identifier with a datetime component thus: 02A84E57 In the design of this format, conciseness was as important a requirement as human decipherability. Other proposals that better meet both requirements would be more interesting than complaints about how cryptic (or vebose) this one is. -- kirk
POSTEL@Usc-Isif.ARPA (04/04/84)
Kirk:
GACK! I hope i never see one of your concise time strings! Even more,
i hope i never have to explain it to anyone!!
Why not use the ISO standards for date and time [ISO-2014, ISO-3307,
ISO-4031]?
The format is generally YYYY MM DD HH MM SS OM OS, with various separators.
The local time in Calcutta India of two hours nine minutes and twenty-three
seconds past noon on the third of February 1984 would be
1984-02-03-14:09:23-05:00
or
19840203140923-5000
--jon.
-------Tommy_Ericson__QZ%QZCOM.MAILNET@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA (04/05/84)
I agree with Robert. Write date-time using a consistent ordering. Why not even step up to use the ISO format for date-times?
Rick.Gumpertz@CMU-CS-A.ARPA (Richard H. Gumpertz) (04/05/84)
The ANSI/ISO date standard isn't all that much longer. Why not use it?
840402 is just one digit longer
84093 is the same length (last 3 digits are day-of-year) but hard to decode
The date may be extended with a time, such as 8404020557, without ambiguity,
but some punctuation might make it a bit more readable.
In any case, LOTS of people are now using the standard, so why re-invent the
wheel? Make it readable by the uninitiated!
Rick Gumpertz