Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!ns-mx!hobbes.physics.uiowa.edu!maverick.ksu.ksu.edu!unlinfo.unl.edu!fergvax!shores From: shores@fergvax.unl.edu (Shores) Newsgroups: comp.std.internat Subject: Re: What time is it? [Was: Data compression standard] Message-ID: Date: 23 Jun 91 20:07:40 GMT References: <859@spam.ua.oz> <3761@sirius.ucs.adelaide.edu.au> Sender: news@unlinfo.unl.edu Organization: University of Nebraska - Lincoln Lines: 62 Nntp-Posting-Host: fergvax.unl.edu In <3761@sirius.ucs.adelaide.edu.au> gordoni@berlioz.ua.oz (Gordon Irlam) writes: >From article <859@spam.ua.oz>, by ross@spam.ua.oz.au (Ross Williams) > [A meta standard for data compression.] >> Date string - A date string is a standard string of length 11 having >> the format "dd-mmm-yyyy" where dd is in the range "01".."31", mmm >> is in the range "Jan","Feb",.."Dec" (Case dependent), and yyyy is >> in the range "1900" and "9999". >Hence, > 20-Jun-1991 >But this creates yet another incompatible date/time format. It would >be better to adopt a standard date/time format. >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 contains "white space" characters. > - Even without the white space the mapping from literal strings to > date/times is many to 1. > - The representation of the month only makes sense in English > speaking countries. > - It doesn't include the century. (What will happen to Usenet on > the 1st of January 2000?) >It would probably be better to choose one of the following. > 1991-06-20 > 1991-06-20T15:48:18Z >These are the "extended format complete representation of a calendar >date", and the "extended format complete representation of a moment of >Coordinated Universal Time" as specified by ISO 8601. I have a better idea. Instead of storing a date STRING, why not just store a number? The Macintosh stores dates as a 4 byte number, representing the seconds elapsed since Jan 1, 1904. Unix has a similar convention, only from 1972 (better, IMHO). Then it should be up to the user program to represent the date. The Mac has IUDateString, unix and others have ctime(), etc. --tom shores PS: considering the nature of this group, shouldn't it be called "comp.ression" :-) Tom... Tommy... Thomas... the Tom-ster, the Tom-boy, the Tomminator... ... Tom Shores, Department of Mathematics, University of Nebraska. ... shores@fergvax.unl.edu