Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!mcsun!news.funet.fi!fuug!sics.se!ifi.uio.no!enag From: enag@ifi.uio.no (Erik Naggum) Newsgroups: comp.std.internat Subject: Re: What time is it? [Was: Data compression standard] Message-ID: Date: 23 Jun 91 19:08:13 GMT References: <859@spam.ua.oz> <3761@sirius.ucs.adelaide.edu.au> Sender: enag@ifi.uio.no (Erik Naggum) Followup-To: comp.std.internat Organization: Naggum Software, Oslo, Norway Lines: 50 Nntp-Posting-Host: gyda.ifi.uio.no In-Reply-To: gordoni@berlioz.ua.oz's message of 22 Jun 91 11: 01:26 GMT Originator: enag@gyda.ifi.uio.no Gordon Irlam writes: | | A fairly common date/time format on the Internet is that used in | RFC 822. It looks something like this. | | 20 Jun 91 15:48:18 GMT | | Unfortunately this date/time format has several disadvantages: | | - It doesn't include the century. (What will happen to Usenet on | the 1st of January 2000?) The IETF Host Requirements working group sensibly recommended four-digit year specification in RFC 1123: 5.2.14 RFC-822 Date and Time Specification: RFC-822 Section 5 The syntax for the date is hereby changed to: date = 1*2DIGIT month 2*4DIGIT All mail software SHOULD use 4-digit years in dates, to ease the transition to the next century. | It would probably be better to choose one of the following. | | 1991-06-20 This is probably the most readable choice. | 1991-06-20T15:48:18Z This seems needlessly cluttered. | It would be a serious mistake to allow any ISO 8601 date/time format | since writing a program to parse an arbitrary ISO date/time | representation would be a big challenge. Instead adopt just one | possible representation. (I would suggest the second of the two | formats presented above.) I'm sure writing an ISO 8601 parser which returns the UNIX standard time representation (seconds since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 +0000, or whatever ;-) is a challenge, but it would be very, very useful. Are there anybody out there who would like to work with me on this? -- Erik Naggum Professional Programmer +47-2-836-863 Naggum Software Electronic Text 0118 OSLO, NORWAY Computer Communications