[PYTHON DB-SIG] RE: Date-Time requirements (esp. for databases)

[Greg Stein]

>----------
>From: 	Anthony Baxter[SMTP:arb@connect.com.au]
>Sent: 	Wednesday, October 30, 1996 5:49 PM
>To: 	Thomas Breuel
>Cc: 	db-sig@python.org
>Subject: 	Re: [PYTHON DB-SIG] [comp.lang.python] Date-Time requirements (esp.
>for databases) 
>
>Hardcoding a parser to assume that the use of / as a delimeter means
>"US M/D/Y" format would be very suboptimal. I can't see any alternative
>apart from making it a switch as to which format you want.

You need to be *very* careful with "switches." What if my module wants
M/D/Y and yours wants D/M/Y, so we set the flag in the date module?
Oops. One of our modules won't work.

Again, I'll reiterate: I believe that the C module only implement the
core date-time Type and we punt formatting and parsing up to Python.

Why? Heck... just look at the darn discussion... this amount of
discussion means that the problem is inherently difficult, prone to
subjective viewpoints and needs, unknown requirements, etc. Creating a
requirements or specification for formatting/parsing is just fooling
yourself into thinking that you got them all.

-g

>--
>Greg Stein, Microsoft Corporation            execfile("disclaimer.py")

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