this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2023
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Memes

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[–] [email protected] 553 points 2 years ago (24 children)

YYYY-MM-DD is the only acceptable date format, as commanded by ISO 8601.

[–] [email protected] 90 points 2 years ago

"There shall be no other date formats before ISO8601. Remember this format and keep it as the system default"

[–] [email protected] 57 points 2 years ago

Largest to smallest unit of time. It just makes sense.

[–] [email protected] 51 points 2 years ago

Sorting by date would be so much better with yyyymmdd .

[–] [email protected] 37 points 2 years ago (4 children)

ISO 8601, while great, has too many formats. May I introduce RFC 3339 instead?

https://ijmacd.github.io/rfc3339-iso8601/

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 years ago (1 children)

If you have years of files named similarly with the date, you will love the ISO standard and how it keeps things sorted and easy to read.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (7 children)

I have autohotkey configured to insert the current date in ISO 8601 format into my filenames on keyboard shortcut for just this reason. So organized. So pure.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (9 children)

Glad I can count my own country, Lithuania, among the enlightened.

EDIT: Source of the picture: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Date_format_by_country_NEW.svg

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 years ago (8 children)
[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 years ago

Funny thing, in ISO 8601 date isn't separated by colon. The format is "YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS+hh:mm". Date is separated by "-", time is separated by ":", date and time are separated by "T" (which is the bit that a lot of people miss). Time zone indicator can also be just "Z" for UTC. Many of these can be omitted if dealing with lesser precision (e.g. HH:MM is a valid timestamp, YYYY-MM is a valid datestamp if referring to just a month). (OK so apparently if you really want to split hairs, timestamps are supposed to be THH:MM etc. Now that's a thing I've never seen anyone use.) Separators can also be omitted though that's apparently not recommended if quick human legibility is of concern. There's also YYYY-Wxx for week numbers.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 years ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 109 points 2 years ago (12 children)

DD/MM/YY and YY/MM/DD are the only acceptable ones IMO. Throwing a DD in between YY and MM is just weird since days move by faster so they should be at one of the ends and since YY moves the slowest it should be on the other end.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 2 years ago (3 children)

I'm not kidding when I ask: are there really a lot of people using MM/DD/YYYY??

[–] [email protected] 112 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Almost 350 million of us morons down south of you.

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I think most Americans do. Or at least it was taught that way in school when I was growing up. Maybe it’s because of the way we speak dates, like “October 23rd” or “May 9th, 2005”.

Regardless, the only true way to write dates is YYYY-MM-DD.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 years ago

Pretty much every American I've ever met. Dates on drivers license, bank info, etc - all in MM/DD/YYYY ... or even just MM/DD/YY

I regularly confuse people with YYYY-MM-DD

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[–] [email protected] 105 points 2 years ago (7 children)

ISO 8601 format is the best (YYYY-MM-DD).

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Came here to say this. I try to name all my docs in the YYYY-MM-DD-descriptive-name.ext format.

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[–] [email protected] 100 points 2 years ago (4 children)

YYYY-MM-DD (honestly without dashes) is the only helpful format.

If you name all your files with this as a suffix then your files automatically sort versions of themselves in order when sorting by name.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 2 years ago

ISO 8601 baby

Though it ought to be a prefix, not a suffix

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 years ago (2 children)

You mean as a prefix, right?

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 years ago

Came here to say this, I use DD.MM.YY in day-to-day stuff, but for files it's either YYYY_MM_DD or YY_MM_DD, the automatic ordering is beautiful

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[–] [email protected] 75 points 2 years ago
[–] [email protected] 53 points 2 years ago (11 children)

MMDDYY is just a mess. Otherwise… US problems, I don’t care…

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[–] [email protected] 48 points 2 years ago (1 children)

It actually makes sense when you put YYYY/MM/DD in filenames as they will be sorted pretty neat (ex: reports)

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[–] [email protected] 47 points 2 years ago (6 children)

It is arguably the best way to name large sets of indexed files on a filesystem.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 years ago

I think that the best argument is that it makes sense when combined with hours minutes and seconds.

yyyy/MM/dd hh:mm:ss

Goes from large to small units.

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[–] [email protected] 47 points 2 years ago (11 children)

This meme implies there's an equal battle between MM/DD/YY and DD/MM/YY, which is nonsense. Much like imperial units, only 'murica uses MM/DD/YY.

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[–] [email protected] 45 points 2 years ago (13 children)

YYYY-MM-DD in Hungary too, that us shit is totally non logical, i cant get used to it

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 2 years ago (1 children)

When you're naming a file, you can't use anything else.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 years ago

You're not wrong. through much trial and error in the 1990s I learned this was the most efficient & accurate & chronologically searchable way to date things.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 2 years ago

YYYY-MM-DD for everything digital, DD-MM-YYYY for everything IRL.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 2 years ago (4 children)

I propose the use of MYDYDM format. So, October 15, 2023 will be written as 121350. Just to make it as confusing as possible.

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Iso date format. Anything to do with photos is best to have in this format at the start of the filename.

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 2 years ago (9 children)

YYYY-MM-DD for files, DD-MM-YYYY for normal use

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 2 years ago (2 children)

TBH, Japanese format makes sense when you use it to name files/directories, as sorting by "name" is equivalenti to sorting by "last modified".

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 years ago (2 children)

equivalenti

Love typos that force me to read comments with an Italian accent

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 years ago

I'm actually italian, lol, but that was a genuine typo.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 2 years ago (6 children)

Japan I can get behind but MM/dd/yyyy is just evil, why would you sandwich days between months and years? You monster

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 years ago (6 children)
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[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 years ago

Japan wins this one.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 years ago (6 children)

DD/MM for readability, YYYY/MM/DD for alphabetical sorting that's also chronological.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 years ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 46 points 2 years ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I'll fuck of when it's 2024/22/11.

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