[thelist] Date and Time issue Worldwide

[rudy]

>>> What time/date formats are globally acceptable?
>>ISO standard     2002-04-12
>
> I think Rudy was suggesting the database storage format.

thanks, joel, for coming to my defence, but i was answering the question

;o)

i was going to mention that the ISO should be competent enough to pick a
global standard, but martin beat me to it

as for database formats, joel, i think i know what you were suggesting, and
you're absolutely right, you can display it any way you like

one of the joys in my life is knowing where to look up the various format
codes (quick, in microsoft sql/server, what's 107? in access, what's the
code for minutes?  in mysql, what's %e?)

however, no database actually stores dates in any human-misinterpretable
format

as we learned in this very thread, unix uses re humungous integers, the
number of seconds since 1970... in db2/400, if i recall correctly, a date
is the number of days since 4004 bc or something...

your mileage may vary

in any case, it doesn't matter how it's stored, as long as the database
does all that nice date interval arithmetic for ya, eh?

the only way to "control" the date format *when storing dates* is to use a
char field instead of a date field, but that would be dumb...


rudy