[PYTHON DB-SIG] [comp.lang.python] Date-Time requirements (esp. for databases)

[Thomas Breuel]

    >>> Jim Fulton wrote
    > Petri Raitio wrote:
    > > I wonder if it would make sense to use the separator as a format
    > > specifier and have format-specific DMY orders, so that 10/30/1996 and
    > > 30.10.1996 would be valid dates but 30/10/1996 and 10.30.1996 would
    > > not.  This way, it would be easy for us Europeans to specify a native
    > > format date in a program written in the US.
    > 
    > This is an interesting idea.  Is the correlation between delimiter and
    > order really that strong?
    
    I doubt it. Australia uses D/M/Y, and, f'r instance, every piece of paper 
    I've seen from a bank has a field like   __ / __ / ____ and expects day, 
    month, year. (actually, they usually have it like __ / __ / 19__, but that's
    just banks being morons.)

In the US, "/" pretty strongly suggest "month/day" order, while other
delimiters ("-", ".") pretty strongly suggest "day-month" order (the
year is unambiguous right now, either because it's 4 digits, or because
it's too large to be a day or month).  In fact, if an Australian uses
"/" in dates in business correspondence with the US, they will be
misunderstood.  Complete lack of a delimiter (19961031) strongly
suggests YMD order.

Of course, the least ambiguous way of writing dates is using three
letter abbreviations for the month and four digit years (10 Jan 1996).
I believe that, at least for the most common languages using Roman
script, the months are unambiguous even if you don't know the language
that the date was written in.

Thomas.

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