#Timesaver
9 messages in this thread
The style of writing dates is definitely different here from that in Europe.
They write the day, then the month, then the year. We write month, then day,
then year. Sure is confusing to read when the dates are like "07/09/88". Is
this July 9, or is it Sept. 7? Depends on the country.
Betty,
I believe that countries that use the day-month-year format also use
periods between the sets rather than the slash so 07/09/88 would be July 9th,
1988 in US format and 07.09.88 would be September 7th, 1988 in European format.
Don
Not here… it's dd/mm/yy
Very confuddling.
-larry
Hmmm, doesn't Germany use dd-mm-yy?
-Jack-
Jack,
I really don't know. The only ones I am really familiar with are the US and
Canadian conventions. I really like Vic's way, which I have seen before in many
programs, that of yymmdd (choose your own delimiter). It is the only order that
really makes sense inside the computer.
-larry
Larry,
I'm Tim Arnot from Precision Software in England. I happen to be over here
for a few weeks and Betty has kindly allowed me to use her account to comment
on your message. Anyway, Hi.
Speaking from my long experience of European date systems, dd/mm/yy or
dd-mm-yy or dd.mm.yy or even dd:mm:yy are equally valid (certainly Superbase
supports them all) what is really important is the order of the numbers.
28/5/88 is obvious, but what about 10/1/88? I guess you need to know the origin
of the date to decipher it correctly. If this is way off beam (I didn't catch
earlier messages, then please ignore this comment.) -Tim
Tim,
Yes, it is necessary to know where the date comes from if it's one that could
be taken in an ambiguous way. I work for a company whose head office is in
California, and that has a Canadian head office in Toronto. I myself am in
Vancouver. I have to be constantly aware of which format the date is in. I can
pretty well count on the dates on US originated mail being in the US order, but
unfortunately, the dates on mail from Toronto can be either way. Just an
artifact of living so close to the US with its resulting influence on what used
to be a much more British (oir French, depending on location) culture.
-larry
For around 12 years now, I've been writing dates like 88/08/13. Nobody gets
confused and they sort 'jim dandy', no fiddling around with fields, just sort
the whole darn date.
You don't need to go as far as Europe – just head north! Proper Canadian date
notation is also dd/mm/yy.