From: "John M. Aldrich" Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp Subject: Re: The Pentium binaries Date: Mon, 20 Oct 1997 18:29:27 +0000 Organization: Two pounds of chaos and a pinch of salt Lines: 34 Message-ID: <344BA307.256E@cs.com> References: <34493e8c DOT 7034975 AT news DOT btinternet DOT com> <344c9a60 DOT 25618850 AT news DOT uni-duisburg DOT de> Reply-To: fighteer AT cs DOT com NNTP-Posting-Host: ppp226.cs.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com DJ-Gateway: from newsgroup comp.os.msdos.djgpp Precedence: bulk Michael Mauch wrote: > > > (page dated > > 1997-04-10, is that the 10th of april or the 4th of October as it is > > neither American or English date format?) > > It's an international format, according to ISO 8601. The order is > year-month-day. How do you distinguish between American and English date > formats, aren't they both separated by slashes? Very poorly. :) However, U.S. (1) dates are written with forward slashes, and British (2) dates are usually separated by periods. I've worked with computer systems that use British dates, and they are a major pain to handle--not because they are any more or less efficient, but because half of the time the people forget and use the U.S. format. Since they are writing it on a form instead of freehand, it's often difficult to tell which is which. I suppose this is like the metric vs. English measurement system: half of the world converts while the other half steadfastly refuses. (The U.S. is a major culprit here, too.) (1) I hesitate to say American, because there is more than one country on the continent of America. (2) Britain includes England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, and they all use the same date format (AFAIK). -- --------------------------------------------------------------------- | John M. Aldrich | "Sin lies only in hurting other | | aka Fighteer I | people unnecessarily. All other | | mailto:fighteer AT cs DOT com | 'sins' are invented nonsense." | | http://www.cs.com/fighteer | - Lazarus Long | ---------------------------------------------------------------------