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of the date standard but are simply used here to enhance legibility on the printed
page.)
Unfortunately, the most common date format used in the United States works
in the opposite direction and puts the year last. This is the default representation
on various Microsoft products, although Microsoft's products can support the ISO
format, too.
As it happens, the four-digit ISO standard for date formats is not fully adequate.
Both the ISO standard and the normal U.S. date representation share a common
failing when trying to deal with dates and computers. Both of these date formats
exhibit unconscious attempts to conserve storage space without realizing that this
is causing unnecessary problems.
By adding at least one extra digit to the ISO date format, any date representa-
tion could be accommodated by using the extra digit as a key (shown as “x” in the
examples) to identify whether the ISO date format (x-yyyy-mm-dd) or the U.S.
default date format (x-mm-dd-yyyy) was intended.
The key could also identify other alternatives, such as the normal European
date format (x-dd-mm-yyyy) or even Julian dates, which record the number of
days from the beginning of a year starting with 1 and running to 365 or 366. Even
the traditional Japanese dates based on Imperial reigns could be accommodated.
Using an extra digit (or digits) as a key with the meanings listed in
Table 8.2
would make identifying which date format is intended a lot less messy than what is
currently used. Today, ascertaining which of the many possible date formats might
be used in software applications either requires advance notification to program-
mers and users or extraordinarily complicated algorithms for deriving dates, with
no absolute way of knowing if the date format selected is the right one without
inspection or testing. Consider how versatile date logic would be if one or more
extra digits were utilized.
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