Spyke
lemmy.world

YYYY-MM-DD is the only acceptable date format, as commanded by ISO 8601.

573

"There shall be no other date formats before ISO8601. Remember this format and keep it as the system default"

96

Largest to smallest unit of time. It just makes sense.

56
sartalonreply
lemmy.world

That is what I love so much about standards: there are so many to choose from.

6

YES! I wish more people knew about RFC 3339. While I'm all for ISO 1601, it's a bit too loose in its requirements at times, and people often end up surprised that it's just not the format they picked...

6

Huh, I've never noticed how much bloat was in ISO 8601. I think when most people refer to it, we're specifically referring to the date (optionally with time) format that is shared with RFC 3339, namely 2023-11-22T20:00:18-05:00 (etc). And perhaps some fuzziness for what separates date and time.

4
Empricornreply
feddit.nl

If you have years of files named similarly with the date, you will love the ISO standard and how it keeps things sorted and easy to read.

24
Agent641reply
lemmy.world

I have autohotkey configured to insert the current date in ISO 8601 format into my filenames on keyboard shortcut for just this reason. So organized. So pure.

20
Agent641reply
lemmy.world

Download Autohotkey, and create a new script. Paste these shortcuts into the script and restart the script:

#NoEnv ; Recommended for performance and compatibility with future AutoHotkey releases.

; #Warn ; Enable warnings to assist with detecting common errors.

SendMode Input ; Recommended for new scripts due to its superior speed and reliability.

SetWorkingDir %A_ScriptDir% ; Ensures a consistent starting directory.

:R*?:ddd::

FormatTime, CurrentDateTime,, yyyy-MM-dd

SendInput %CurrentDateTime%

return

:R*?:dtt::

FormatTime, CurrentDateTime,, yyMMddHHmm

SendInput %CurrentDateTime%

Return

Now, if you type 'ddd' on your keyboard, the current date will be typed out, eg '2023-11-23'.

If you type 'dtt' tgen the datetime stamp will be typed out in YYMMDDhhmm format, eg 2311231012

There are so many cool things you van do with AHK to make your work more productive. For example, rather tgan typing your email address a billion times, add the shortcut:

::add1::[email protected]

And then you can type 'add1' and hit space, and your email address will be typed out in full. Of course, the string 'add1' can be whatever you want.

8

(This doesn't consider the separator) Cyan - DD/MM/YY Magenta - MM/DD/YY Yellow - YY/MM/DD The other ones are mixes of those two colors, so e.g. the US is MM/DD/YY and YY/MM/DD (apparently).

Also just noticed I didn't attribute this picture, I'll edit my comment.

5
lemmy.world

Canada threw up their hands and said, "Fuck it, I don't care, use whatever date format you like."

6

We are ridiculously inconsistent in Canada. I've seen all 3 of the most popular formats here (2023-11-22, 11/22/2023, and 22/11/2023) in similarish amounts. Government forms seem to be increasingly using RFC 3339 dates, but even they aren't entirely onboard.

5
Iron Lynxreply
lemmy.world

Lithuania is one of the Baltic States, conveniently squished between Russia & Belarus to the east and the sea to the west. Across that sea is Sweden. You'll usually see three countries be the parts of this set. Lithuania is the southernmost of these three.

8
JohnDClayreply
sh.itjust.works

Except the information is given least to most important, making verbal abbreviation difficult. Works great for file names though.

9
Pulptasticreply
midwest.social

There's this really cool shorthand where you drop the year because it seldom changes. It's called MM-DD

16
lemmy.ml

Yeah and if you need to know what year, you can just add it to the end like this MM-DD-YY.

1
itslilithreply
lemmy.blahaj.zone

MM-DD-YY is the worst abomination I've seen yet

12-04-08

good luck figuring out what that is

9

Had a coworker who used MMDDYY with no dashes. Unless you knew it was very hard to figure out, since it could also just be a number that happened to be 6 digits, too. At least YYYY-MM-DD looks like a date generally.

1

"I can reuse this old function if I just monkey-patch this other class to work with it, no one will have any issues understanding what's going on"

Edit: Thought this was the programmerhumor community. For context: A monkey-patch is when you write code that changes the behaviour of some completely different code when it is running, thus making its inner workings completely incomprehensible to the poor programmer using or reading your code.

4
geissireply
feddit.de

For file names, absolutely.
When I’m asking what date it is I typically know the current year.

9

I can lie under the table, puking my guts out and still remember the year.
You need more training, son.

1
lemmy.ca

DD/MM/YY and YY/MM/DD are the only acceptable ones IMO. Throwing a DD in between YY and MM is just weird since days move by faster so they should be at one of the ends and since YY moves the slowest it should be on the other end.

110
lemm.ee

I'm not kidding when I ask: are there really a lot of people using MM/DD/YYYY??

34
lemmy.3cm.us

Using a different date format that means the exact same thing anyway does not make you a moron.

-31

My favourite thing is that files are sorted automatically by date if you use yyyy-mm-dd. Sometimes there are just practical reasons.

17
CM400reply
lemmy.world

I think most Americans do. Or at least it was taught that way in school when I was growing up. Maybe it’s because of the way we speak dates, like “October 23rd” or “May 9th, 2005”.

Regardless, the only true way to write dates is YYYY-MM-DD.

37

Pretty much every American I've ever met. Dates on drivers license, bank info, etc - all in MM/DD/YYYY ... or even just MM/DD/YY

I regularly confuse people with YYYY-MM-DD

17

If you use DD/MM/YYYY, dumb sorting algorithms will put all of the 1sts of every month together, all of the 2nds of every month together, etc. That doesn't seem very useful unless you're trying to identify monthly trends, which is fundamentally flawed as things like the number of days in the month or which day of the week a date falls on can significantly disrupt those trends.

With MM/DD/YY, the only issue is multiple years being grouped together. Which may be what you want, especially if the dates are indicating cumulative totals. Depending on the data structure, years are often sorted out separately anyways.

YYYY/MM/DD is definitely the best for sorting. However, the year is often the least important piece in data analysis. Because often the dataset is looking at either "this year" or "the last 12 months". So the user's eyes need to just ignore the first 5 characters, which is not very efficient.

If you're using a tool that knows days vs months vs years that can help, but you can run into compatibility issues when trying to move things around.

The ugly truth no one wants to admit on these conversations is that these formats are tools. Some are better suited to certain jobs than others.

6

Japan is YYYY-MM-DD, but when we talk about dates where a year is unneeded, we just cut it off which leaves it in the US standard format of MM-DD, much to the annoyance of non-US foreigners living here.

1
takedareply
lemmy.world

The only reason they place month as first is because it is fits how dates are read in English, but that's not a good reason to keep that format.

-1

You only think it fits with how it's read in English because that's how you grew up saying it so it sounds natural to you. Your experience is not universal, and is in fact, a minority.

8

It's how it is read in English (simplified) aka american english. Brittish english doesn't do this nonsense, the talk in the correct format (first of january etc.).

(I'm sorry if i made some mistakes, english is my second language)

7
bleistift2reply
feddit.de

I grew up with DD.MM.YYYY. But I think, MM/DD makes sense in everyday usage. You don’t often need to specify dates with year accuracy. “Jane’s prom is on 7th September” – it’s obvious which year is meant. Then it’s sensible to start with the larger unit, MM, instead of DD.

Even in writing you see that the year is always given like an afterthought: “7th September**,** 2023“.

-2
Bizzlereply
lemmy.world

So when you say it out loud you say 7th September, and not September 7th?

3
bleistift2reply
feddit.de

I say “The 7th of September” because I was taught British English in school.

13
lemmy.ml

Came here to say this. I try to name all my docs in the YYYY-MM-DD-descriptive-name.ext format.

23
Buttonsreply
programming.dev

I can see some advantages of that.

I'm American though, so YYYY-DD-MM is the best I can do.

2
mmagodreply
lemmy.world

for me, the section that changes the most goes last..

in a whole year, the YYYY never changes, the MM changes only 12 times.. i never implementing the day.. there's only so many possibilities i could have had for saved files in June. i just go straight to description

3
ladreply
programming.dev

I hope that the comment you answer to was ironical. >!Otherwise there's no hope for us 😰!<

4

haha yeah. i just assumed they were kidding, but if not.. yikes!

1
dillydoggreply
lemmy.one

I like that for files, but not for written documents. When I label things I try to use the most intuitive/least confusing way I can think of: DD mmm YYYY. This comment is posted on 23 NOV 2023, for example.

14

I do prefer the abbreviated month with the yyyy mmm dd format. It makes things relatively easy to sort but you also don't have to worry about confusing others if you are referring to the 10th month or day for example.

5
lemmy.zip

YYYY-MM-DD (honestly without dashes) is the only helpful format.

If you name all your files with this as a suffix then your files automatically sort versions of themselves in order when sorting by name.

99
Shayreelzreply
sh.itjust.works

Their assumption is that the filename is the same otherwise e.g. myNotes20231122.txt

12

Came here to say this, I use DD.MM.YY in day-to-day stuff, but for files it's either YYYY_MM_DD or YY_MM_DD, the automatic ordering is beautiful

14

Yeah this method is superior for digital filing. I can't imagine the sorting clusters I'd have to go through to find what I want any other way

9
okr765reply
lemmy.ml

Not to us burgerland citizens! 🇺🇲🇺🇲🦅🦅💥💥

7
lemmy.world

Bald eagles aren't endangered anymore.

Plus being American and having lived abroad every country has their bullshit. You just hear about America's shit because it has the most popular forms of mass media.

Dumbasses are plentiful everywhere

-8

The most American statement ever :D

Edit: I am taking it back and admitting defeat. America != US. I am ashamed.

3
lemmy.world

It actually makes sense when you put YYYY/MM/DD in filenames as they will be sorted pretty neat (ex: reports)

48
lemmy.one

It is arguably the best way to name large sets of indexed files on a filesystem.

47

I think that the best argument is that it makes sense when combined with hours minutes and seconds.

yyyy/MM/dd hh:mm:ss

Goes from large to small units.

24
morrowindreply
lemmy.ml

Files already have computer readable dates that can be used to sort and organize them

-3

In certain instances that may not always be available.

One example I can think of is when browsing on a NAS.

3
lemmy.world

This meme implies there's an equal battle between MM/DD/YY and DD/MM/YY, which is nonsense. Much like imperial units, only 'murica uses MM/DD/YY.

46

If you look at the calendar, you'll see that we are not in 1900 anymore.

No one I know measures their own weight in imperial.

4

Talking about fuel efficiency in miles per liter 🤣

2
The Bartoreply
sh.itjust.works

Only slightly bigger than Australia and Western Australia is nearly twice the size of Texas..

3

When talking about cultural mindshare I'd argue that the quantity of people matters more than the space they've been packed into

3

Liberia and Myanmar also use imperial units, but they're both starting to move towards metric in recent years so soon the US truly will be alone in that

1
rdrireply
lemmy.world

This is literally the most logical method to name a date in text.

10
joneskindreply
lemmy.world

In what text?

In French we say “14 juillet 1789”

We don’t even say “nth day of”

2
rdrireply
lemmy.world

In a text like "the research started at 2003-01-24", or pretty much in any other text where you need to convey all 3 elements.

I bet you also don't say "14 07 1789", because that's what MM format means.

0
joneskindreply
lemmy.world

You bet wrong

We write AND say “La Révolution a démarré le 14/07/1789” or “La Révolution à démarré le 14 juillet 1789”

Spoken numbered month are usually used in an administrative context, to ease the work of our contact.

2

Oh that's right, the spoken administrative context. Same in my dd-mm-yyyy county actually. Still, I find it less intuitive than the logical yyyy-mm-dd when understanding written text.

1
lemmy.world

Fuckin wait until you hear how many feet are in a mile. You all should've waterboarded us harder while we were a young country.

9
ladreply
programming.dev

So no more than 10 thousands of Swedes may get an SSN at the same day (or be born at the same day even 🤔)?

2

You're not wrong. through much trial and error in the 1990s I learned this was the most efficient & accurate & chronologically searchable way to date things.

16
lemmy.ml

Iso date format. Anything to do with photos is best to have in this format at the start of the filename.

38

Iso date format. Anything to do with photos is best to have in this format at the start of the filename.

Fixt.

8
lemm.ee

I propose the use of MYDYDM format. So, October 15, 2023 will be written as 121350. Just to make it as confusing as possible.

37

We're also unduly forgetting about truly little endian date format: DD/MM/YYYY, for instance 52/11/3202 for this Saturday

Also we could just sort the numbers and omit leading zeroes, that way we can save some space, the same date would be 1122235

1

Because in short, it's alphabetical. It will always be in order by year, then month, then day. Literally like how a clock goes HH:MM:SS it's the same thing as YY:MM:DD the right side ticks the fastest. It's in order by hour (year) then minute (month) then second (day). SAME SAME WHY NOT

3
Gabureply
lemmy.world

Because for 99.99% of all situations, you'd already know what year and month it is, so the most readily available piece of information should be the day.

8

If you already know the year and month why write it. ISO or month day are the two most reasonable. You need to zoom in not give yourself a list of options and then randomly pick one later.

-2
lemm.ee

TBH, Japanese format makes sense when you use it to name files/directories, as sorting by "name" is equivalenti to sorting by "last modified".

31
dtrainreply
lemmy.world

equivalenti

Love typos that force me to read comments with an Italian accent

24

I'm actually italian, lol, but that was a genuine typo.

14

Until you need to work across centuries. Then it's eating paste level.

7
feddit.nl

Japan I can get behind but MM/dd/yyyy is just evil, why would you sandwich days between months and years? You monster

28
DAMunzyreply
lemmy.dbzer0.com

I'm an ISO 8601 guy but the MM/DD does make sense in American. We'll say Oct 20th for a date and then straight translate that to numbers 10/20. It makes more sense than counting in French. Ex. 60, 70, 80, 90

5
feddit.de

Counting in French is an incredibly low benchmark. Nice try!

13

They should just introduce a new system. Noone likes five halves of twenty for fifty. I guarantee it.

Just indroduce English numbers, the end.

2

The only reason I could see is if you were speaking it. September 18th 2012 for example might sound a bit better than 18 September 2012.

0
Sanyanovreply
lemmy.world

Funny that only in full Chinese (or Japanese, since 令和 represents a new emperor era in Japan?) I noticed the month is December.

It's 22nd of November, folks

3

yeah i realised after, I guess some people are just really excited about Christmas

3

I like that this includes 2 of the 4 numbers that i can understand from japanese (chinese numerals?)

1
lemmy.world

DD/MM for readability, YYYY/MM/DD for alphabetical sorting that's also chronological.

23
Clbullreply
lemmy.world

Ironically, MM/DD/YYYY works better for chronological sorting than DD/MM/YYYY, so long as you don't go between years.

Didn't think I'd be saying this but the Americans have an edge over us Brits.

-33

By this logic one might say that DD/MM/YYYY works for alphabetical chronological sort if you don't go between months...

14

Have another go at this train of thought, mate... You're basically saying "MM/DD" is better at sorting chronologically than "DD/MM", since the year part is taken out of the equation, which is already the established consensus, and not ironical whatsoever. And the ISO standard is already to use YYYY-MM-DD, so that's the winner IMO, hands down. Japan is simply following that but using a slash as the delimiter.

11

What I said, MM/DD/YYYY is less flawed than DD/MM/YYYY for chronological sorting.

Asian YYYYMMDD way is the best way for computing.., but the American way at least preserves the month and day structure.

1

When you search or do any stable sort, I would think you want your primary attribute to be the one with most finite values? That way you are front loading the pruning of the search space.

So it's actually on favor of Japanese style

2

Hey. If you use your format, then you won't be able to celebrate the new year on 123123, 233112 just doesn't have the same ring to it

4
lemmy.ml

If that one doesn't tickle you, we do have more options to explore like MM/YY/DD or DD/YY/MM

Hell, we even have options like MDY/MDY

4
lemmy.world

May I chime in with a DD MMM YYYY as in 22 NOV 2023

12
thelemmy.club

Its the same for all East Asian countries as well, but I guess slapping JAPAN on it means fast upvotes, like that "Place, Japan" meme.

11

I can't speak for everyone but I see something Japanese then I upvote it, doesn't matter what it is.

Sushi, Bullet train, Bonsai, Anime, Bukkake, Haiku

5

Only within the same century, which is an issue for those of us born last millennium (or managing systems from that time), and could be a real problem in 50-ish years when we could get the first duplicates.

Better to stick with YYYY-MM-DD for alphabetical sorting

11

Why would you save dates as a date format when you can save them as an int or string and make calculations more complicated

1
Camelbeardreply
lemmy.world

Hey dude do you know what time it is?

Sure, it's just about 1700671157

Uh thanks...

4

Uh thanks…

I think the correct response is "1". If something went wrong, you'd respond "0".

2

It makes sense to either go general to specific or specific to general. MM-DD-YYYY is neither.

9

The UK driving licence has birthdate as YMMDDY in the licence number. Totally uncrackable encryption.

9

China does this too. I love getting files in this format.

7
kbin.life

How about 0xYYYMDD or 0xYYYYMDD if you need years after 4095 for some reason.

Today is 0x7e7b16

7
takedareply
lemmy.world

Congrats, you made it even less practical. Why not make it binary if that's the goal?

2
r00tyreply
kbin.life

Nah. With binary, you can lose one hex digit AND the max year would be 2047 (11 bits year, 4 bits month, 5 bits day). What's not to like about hex anyway?

2
r00tyreply
kbin.life

Yes, although isn't that an urban legend? Pretty sure I read that it was.

2
r00tyreply
kbin.life

What I read was that it never happened in the old versions and it wasn't a bug in civ5, in that, it was a nod to the legend. But apparently Sid Meier said it didn't happen in the original games.

EDIT: Here you go https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Gandhi

2
lemmy.ca

Reiwa era enters the chat

Most of Japanese hates the arbitary currender year resetting at each new emperor enthronrment. The conversion is ass and no one knows when it changes (bound to emperor's health) . Worst is its official year that govmt body accepts.

7
nuzkiereply
lemmy.world

What do you mean you can't translate instantly between era year and Gregorian year?

1

You are likely to only refer more than current era. If you're writing govmet grant application, renewing licence or certificate, chances are you mention events hapenned in previous era. You look up table for when the previous era started and ended, which era said year falls into, then convert for each year, each era. Extra minutes wasted every time instead of simply writing in Gregorian year.

1
kbin.social

Yeah but half the time is actually: EYY/MM/DD. Like this year is 令5/MM/DD.

And some years have two values, 2019 was both 平31, from 01/01 until 04/30, then 令1 from 05/01 onwards.

6
Karu 🐲reply
lemmy.world

Is the kanji the name of the period the year belongs to or something? That looks interesting. Where can I find out more?

1

Yup, it's a single character from the name of the era, and the era changes every time the emperor does.

2
MisterFrogreply
lemmy.world

Wat? Like their alphabet, do the Japanese have some double system?

China does this normally. Either YYYY.MM.DD OR YYYY年MM月DD日

1

Yes, they have two date systems in common use. It's only the year that changes though. And there's no way to confuse the two, usually. If you write "2023" instead of "令5" it's pretty obvious. I suppose there is a potential for confusion if one just writes a two-digit year though.

3
lemmy.world

Tbf Japan's system still makes more sense than having the month first. The month is the middle number so it makes no sense having that first

6
Svenarereply
lemmy.world

You talk that way because of how it's written. ::: spoiler spoiler Eh 23rd of November 23/11/23 it's just the order we talk :::

7

T is to delimit the date from the time, and the Z is to delimit the minutes from the timezone info (omitted in the example above).

2

Japan I can get behind but MM/dd/yyyy is just evil, why would you sandwich days between months and years? You monster

5

Japan I can get behind but MM/dd/yyyy is just evil, why would you sandwich days between months and years? You monster

3

Yep, today is 2023, November 22.

Someone should make this an alternative date format in English, it looks and works really well.

3

"Steel Beams Can't Melt Jet Fuel."
wait... it actually makes sense this way

2

To nitpick, it reads from front to back. It just has a different concept of front and back from the West.

1