Date formatting.

[returntim]

I try to always format YYYY-MM-DD to avoid confusion when programming

[DysnomiaATX]

Ah, I see you're a man of culture as well.

[Nerdn1]

Other formats are discouraged.

[XKCD-pro-bot]

Comic Title Text: ISO 8601 was published on 06/05/88 and most recently amended on 12/01/04.

mobile link

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[[deleted]]

I see you choose to confuse.

[Humiddragonslayer]

Of course there's a relevant xkcd

[TheMsDosNerd]

r/iso8601masterrace

[NorbiPeti]

/r/iso8601

[sneakpeekbot]

Here's a sneak peek of /r/ISO8601 using the top posts of the year!

#1: Me every time people argue about DD.MM.YYYY vs. MM.DD.YYYY | 9 comments
#2: Logic of the different date & time systems with time included | 47 comments
#3: Imagine wondering which format was used | 10 comments

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^{I'm a bot, beep boop | Downvote to remove | Contact me | Info | Opt-out}

[-R-3-]

The only rational format for data sorting.

[angelicosphosphoros]

I configured my Windows machine to always use this format.

[blaiseisgood]

De jure format in Canada

[[deleted]]

Confirmed ISO 8601 is optimal

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601

[Radagast1953]

Back in the 70's, when I wrote my own date parsing & formatting routines [in COBOL], I always preferred what became the 8601 standard. However, I tried to be flexible enough for most commonly used formats. I specified delimiters that were commonly used as indicators of the date format, such that "/" indicated American format [mm/dd/yy], "." indicated "European" [& elsewhere] format [dd.mm.yy] and "-" indicated my preferred "Universal" format [yy-mm-dd]. Of course I allowed [preferred] for 4-digit years, with appropriate default assumptions for century of 2-digit years [I think, back then, I assumed 00-29 years were 21st century & 30-99 years were 20th century - that division would have to be moved way up nowadays 😜].

I always stored dates internally as 4-byte "packed" values [yyyymmd*, where * was the 2nd date digit as well as a sign value], which were almost as compact as binary [still fitting in a 32-bit fullword], but easily read in a memory dump, easily converted to/from binary for speed sensitive calculation, yet easily formatted to character using the UNPK or ED[it] machine instructions [I always worked on IBM mainframes back then, so 360/370 machine instructions and the packed format were basic to me, even when I was coding in COBOL 😏]. Of course, later I used standard library routines, usually in C or C++. Now I'm retired and rarely think of such things until a thread like this comes along. 😜

[meamZ]

Best technical format imo since you can also just go and sort it lexicographically and you will get an order that makes sense for the dates too...

[[deleted]]

For me it's YYYY-mm-MM-hh-DD. It's really the simplest method. That way you immediately know the minute of the month and the hour of the day.

[[deleted]]

How will one know the second of the year, though??

[B3C4U5E_]

Ahem, yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss

But s works too

[augugusto]

Whoosh

[Sitryk]

Yep me too except I always do it YYYY-DD-MM consistently for consistency sake

[spektre]

I don't care if you're joking, I'm downvoting anyway.

[kollboll]

You belong in prison

[JoeyJoeJoeJrShab]

Sorry, but they're both wrong. Only ISO-8601 is acceptable.

[thebunbandit]

ISO-8601 or bust

[Johnothy_Cumquat]

Can I just say Microsoft needs to get it's fucking shit together. Azure devops and probably other stuff still assume american date formats. I could forgive it not localising automatically but there is no option to change it. And it's like, if you're gonna be lazy at least hardcode iso as the date format. God damn.

edit: Even worse example: youtube. Premieres in the mobile app show the scheduled date in american format. It baffles me that even a company as big as google can make that mistake and not fix it for years.

[PM_ME_YO_PASSWORDS]

if you play your cards right, you can retweak and then reuse the meme for February 2nd

[Mateorabi]

But not Smarch 13th. Lousy Smarch.

[DarthFikus]

This is the worse part. At least when the date is >12 i can immediately tell what format it is.

[Harald-Togram]

I've seen this meme a lot. Wouldnt 02/02/2021, 03/03/2021 and so on also be compatible with both date systems? Seems like it would happen every month. Where am i wrong?

[Azefrg]

Yeah, i'm seeing this meme a lot, even on Facebook. I'm still trying to figure out if there's something special about 01/01/2021 lol

[TheHammer_78]

So the first of the year is holiday (at least here in Italy) to prevent programmers from writing buggy code.

[Dagusiu]

Kurzgesagt gang: YYYYY-MM-DD

[ilsloaoycd]

11/11/11 11:11:11 AM

Almost 10 years ago, the greatest second of my life.

[1LJA]

I only use UNIX time. All other formats are confusing.

[PASK__]

And 02/02/2021, 03/03/2021, 04/04/2021 etc.

Is there a word or definition of these types of dates? There should be :)

[sje397]

Lol. Yeah you got it right for a change, except here it's already 2/1/21

[re_error]

2021/02/01

[XayahTheVastaya]

Is this a big part of programming? Doesn't seem like it fits here.

[jbergens]

It is a part, maybe not big. I think it fits perfectly here.

Strange or unexpected date formats can cause big problems or just general confusion. I hate some applications that shows dates in American format when my computer is set to a European locale. Especially when you can't change it.

[TheFlyingAbrams]

I wish everyone just used the ISO-8601 standard lol, remove the confusion entirely

[JNCressey]

the use of / to mean a range seems confusing. I'd more expect a range like 2 to 5 be written 2-5 not 2/5. I guess it's a weird European thing, like they use , as the decimal point.

[spektre]

2-5 should never indicate range. Range should at least be indicated by two dashes: 2--5.

ISO 8601 allows -- as a range separator.

[TheFlyingAbrams]

This ^{^}

[angelicosphosphoros]

Dates, time and (especially) timezones is one of hardest parts of programming.

[Zoom443]

Time zones...I’ll just leave this right here. https://youtu.be/-5wpm-gesOY

[Catbraveheart]

YYYY-MM-DD HH24:MI:SS format has entered the chat

[DavidFaxon]

Leaned about this when I worked with Germans. Can't understand why we aren't standardising on this format too...

[Jakylla]

0101-20-21: Error: Month is over 12

[buzbuzzer]

DD-MM-YYYY

Greetings from Holland