Colin Watson wrote:
On Mon, Dec 29, 2003 at 10:01:07AM -0500, Paul Morgan wrote:On Sun, 28 Dec 2003 01:21:12 +0000, Colin Watson wrote:On Sat, Dec 27, 2003 at 05:39:16AM -0500, Paul Morgan wrote:On Sat, 27 Dec 2003 00:50:16 +0000, Ken Gilmour wrote:I believe the Americans do it backwards... 1/04/2004 being January 4th rather than 1st of April :-).Who's doing it backwards depends, I guess, on your point of view.Both "4th January 2004" and "January 4th 2004" are clear; "2004/01/04" is clear, and sorts well; "04/01/2004" is sadly ambiguous due to the prevalence of the US date format but at least has the benefit of being in a rational order (i.e. not middle-endian). "01/04/2004" just has nothing to recommend it at all. I guess it's a religious war, but for once the superior options seem technically obvious.My point was that neither is "backwards". Dates are no different than any other language element. Americans usually say, "January fourth, two thousand three" and so they write their dates that way. Brits tend to say "Fourth of January...". It's simply dialect stretching back centuries, and nothing to do with date sorting on computers.You're talking about "4th of January", etc. I'm talking about the meaning of "01/04/2004". Apples and oranges. If you're going to write your dates in an abbreviated form subject to ambiguity then you should pick a rational abbreviated form.
So do you abbreviate International Business Machines as BIM? It is just local preference, and silly to argue about, but it is even sillier to argue about it while dismissing the other side's arguments out of hand.
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