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From: enag@ifi.uio.no (Erik Naggum)
Newsgroups: comp.std.internat
Subject: Re: What time is it? [Was: Data compression standard]
Message-ID: <ENAG.91Jun25161013@gyda.ifi.uio.no>
Date: 25 Jun 91 14:10:18 GMT
References: <859@spam.ua.oz> <3761@sirius.ucs.adelaide.edu.au> <shores.677707660@fergvax>
	<1991Jun25.001607.28886@redsox.bsw.com>
Sender: enag@ifi.uio.no (Erik Naggum)
Organization: Naggum Software, Oslo, Norway
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In-Reply-To: campbell@redsox.bsw.com's message of 25 Jun 91 00: 16:07 GMT
Originator: enag@gyda.ifi.uio.no

Lessee, it's June 25th, 1991, 3:51pm local time, or 19910625135127.
Alternatively it's 1991-06-25 15:51:27 +02:00.  From both a machine-
and human-readable point of view, delimiters can be very helpful in
disambiguating syntaxes.  A string of digits is not much different
from a string of bits, as I see it.  Especially as the string gets
longer, it's hard for humans to sort out what's what.  Pick out the
day of the month from 19910625135127 and 1991-06-25 15:51:27, as a
simple exercise.

Further, I don't want to see heuristics added to the parsing algorithm
in order to find out what time was _really_ intended.  E.g. is
91-06-25 a date 1900 years ago or just a sloppy syntax?  Is
91062515512744 now, with centisecond precision, 1900 years ago with
centisecond precision or the 15th day of th 25th month of the year
9106 at 51:27:44?  Ok, so it isn't the latter, because it's absurd,
but there are cases where it would be hard to figure it out.

</Erik>



--
Erik Naggum             Professional Programmer            +47-2-836-863
Naggum Software             Electronic Text             <erik@naggum.no>
0118 OSLO, NORWAY       Computer Communications        <enag@ifi.uio.no>