On Sun, 19 Aug 2001 at 22:49:01 -0400, Peter Alling
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> declaimed in honeyed tones:
> The expiration date is not in a standard US or European
> format. They are using the old COBOL pic standard used on
> any computer system where the Geeks thought ahead to the Y2K
> problem, (some data stores were Y2K compliant as long ago as
> the 1970's). The reason to use this format is that it is un-
> ambiguous. If you use say 12/7/2001 you cannot be sure if the
> date is December 7th or July 12th, depending where the stuff might
> have been manufactured, (although you can probably be sure of the
> year). However with 2001/08/01 you know that you're looking at
> August 1st 2001, by convention.
Actually the reason for writing yyyy/mm/dd is that a simple sort of
one field (the three subfields concatentated into one) puts the data
in date sequence. If you write the subfields in any other order, you
have to specify two or more keys to sort into date order. Trivial
geeky obsession with minor efficiencies? Perhaps, but I was one of
the geeks writing code back in the 1970's and one had to have the
wisdom of Solomon to balance cost vs efficiency well.
Then on Sun, 19 Aug 2001 at 23:19:24 -0400, "Jeff"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wailed:
I have an accounting program that under W95, followed the DD/MM/YYYY
format, but when I upgraded to ME it switched to MM/DD/YYYY. I'm
trying to figure out how to switch it back to the older format, to no
avail. Every time I enter an invoice I have to enter the month and
day, instead of just the day, when I'm in the current month.
The dates are probably internally stored as a simple day number
relative to 1900 Jan 01 and you are seeing different formatting.
There's probably a setting somewhere, perhaps under "International"
in Windows itself, to control how dates appear.
ObPentax: I have date backs on both my bodies (SFxN & Z-1P) and have
them set to yy/mm/dd.
--
Rodger Whitlock
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
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