Changing to Standard Date Format
Yet another action out of Standardisation series. This time I have introduced an ISO8601 date for my daily operations, wherever I can. Now my date reads: 2011-05-14. IT Servers directly under our control have also received this notion.
Why was the standard introduced?
Basic Rules of writing date & time
Further information about the ISO8601 standard can be read, for example, here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601.
In my computers, I use the following setting for my short date format: yyyy-MM-dd. I leave long date format traditional, so dates are human readable as "14 May 2011".
I already have felt the benefits, in any lists sorted by date; you instantly see where one month ends, or year ends. No more having a mishmash of "21/04/2003" and "14/09/2010". The month and year borders are now clear. These include Event logs, Mail lists in Outlook, Explorer file lists... also within various logs they are clearly searcheable. No more confusion "is this date American or British"? It's Standard.
I also changed my Casio watch to display M/D instead of D/M. Now I have this date on the watch, too. It just comes natural that after 5-12 comes 5-13, 5-14, etc... 5-30, 5-31, 6-01. No more wild jumps.
So far I enjoy the results of joining standards.
* I believe there will be day when the entire Earth just changes to Standard date and time format. USA resistance will fall, and we'll have this confusion no more. Nevermore. Europe and Canada area already on track, many countries want to use this as their national standard too.
Why was the standard introduced?
- There are many formats for date and time in the world. This adds confusion. Americans insist that 5/04/2011 is "4th of May, 2011". Britons will argue that it's "5 April 2011". Japanese prefer year at the front.
- Why dashes ('-')? Traditional British slash ('/') cannot be used in a folder or file name. Dot ('.') may be good for German dates, because in German "4." means ordinal numbers (4th). So German "4.05.2011" means "4th of 5th month, 2011". Dash, on the other side, is (a) a good separator clearly visible, and (b) useable in folder names.
- Only Year-Month-Date format is lexicographically properly sorted. Sort the folders by name, and they will be sorted by date. All other formats (Month/Day/Year or Day/Month/Year) are not sortable.
Basic Rules of writing date & time
- According to ISO8601 standard, 2-digit year cannot be used. So "11-05-04" will be incorrect, and "2011-05-04" must be used. (Righteously so, an American would still read it like 5 November '04!). So, only four digits in year.
- Leading Zeroes must be preserved: "2011-5-4" is incorrect, just as 2011-5-04 and 2011-05-4. Zeroes must not be omitted. Correct form: "2011-05-04". (I guess except killing potential confusion, it also keeps date length always the same.
- Using no dashes in computer representation is acceptable: 20110504 is a valid date.
- Partial references are possible: 2011 for Year 2011, 2011-04 for April 2011.
- Further time portion can be added. In simplest form, it's a 24-hour notation time separated by colons (':'), prepended by a letter "T". Any part can be omitted or decimal fraction of a second can be added, depending on precision required: 23, 23:00, 23:00:21, 23:00:21.98. Thus, full date/time can be 2011-05-14T01:33:21 or if date/time is put separately, 2011-05-14 01:33:21. These formats are still automatically sorted.
Further information about the ISO8601 standard can be read, for example, here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601.
In my computers, I use the following setting for my short date format: yyyy-MM-dd. I leave long date format traditional, so dates are human readable as "14 May 2011".
I already have felt the benefits, in any lists sorted by date; you instantly see where one month ends, or year ends. No more having a mishmash of "21/04/2003" and "14/09/2010". The month and year borders are now clear. These include Event logs, Mail lists in Outlook, Explorer file lists... also within various logs they are clearly searcheable. No more confusion "is this date American or British"? It's Standard.
I also changed my Casio watch to display M/D instead of D/M. Now I have this date on the watch, too. It just comes natural that after 5-12 comes 5-13, 5-14, etc... 5-30, 5-31, 6-01. No more wild jumps.
So far I enjoy the results of joining standards.
* I believe there will be day when the entire Earth just changes to Standard date and time format. USA resistance will fall, and we'll have this confusion no more. Nevermore. Europe and Canada area already on track, many countries want to use this as their national standard too.