Tom=E1s =D3 h=C9ilidhe wrote:

> Gerhard Fiedler wrote:
>> 2008-05-07 is the one that's least ambiguous. It's always yyyy-mm-dd. I
>> think there's an ISO standard for it.
> =

> And I bet it's 200 pages long :-D

Bet how much? Think you lost... :)

Given the complexity of the issue, the number of different formats and the
many different ways dates are referred to, this standard is not excessive
at all, IMO.

ISO 8601:2004 Data elements and interchange formats -- Information
interchange -- Representation of dates and times

A good summary:
<http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-time.html>
Wikipedia, also good:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601>
More to the point, Wikipedia provides a direct download link for the ISO
document (40 pages):
<http://isotc.iso.org/livelink/livelink/4021199/ISO_8601_2004_E.zip?func=3D=
doc.Fetch&nodeid=3D4021199>

ISO's own summary: =

<http://www.iso.org/iso/date_and_time_format>
Here you can buy it (not sure how this relates to the link published in
Wikipedia):
<http://www.iso.org/iso/catalogue_detail?csnumber=3D40874>

A short overview of the formats in list form, from an older version of ISO
8601 (1988):
<http://www.hydracen.com/dx/iso8601.htm>

The W3C take on this (they basically adopted a subset of ISO 8601):
<http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/iso-date>
<http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-datetime>

Gerhard

-- =

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