Thursday, June 22, 2006

751 A Thought on Dates....

In the US, the standard date format is (m)m/(d)d/(yy)yy, as in November 2, 2003 = 11/2/03 or 11/02/2003.

In other parts of the world, it might be (d)d/(m)m/(yy)yy, as in 02/11/03.

Neither has ever made much sense to me.

In many applications, it is customary to put the global set first, then the first subset, then the subset of that subset, and so on. Makes for easier sorting.

Note that the format for time is that way - hh:mm:ss
And ordinary numbers - Thousands hundreds tens ones

In my opinion, now that much of the world is computerized, everyone ought to be using yyyy/mm/dd, or even do away with the superfluous slashes altogether and just write yyyymmdd.

When I label set of files that I might eventually want to sort by date, like photographs or a series of text files, I use yymmdd in the file name. They sort nicely.

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