I don't think it's true that there are alternative ISO standards,
otherwise the ISO standard (YYYY-MM-DD) wouldn't be a standard.
The standard applies only to _numerical_ dates, however.
This web page gives a summary:
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-time.html
Quotation from the page:
ISO 8601 is only specifying numeric notations and does not cover
dates and times where words are used in the representation. It is
not intended as a replacement for language-dependent worded date
notations such as "24. Dezember 2001" (German) or "February 4, 1995"
(US English).
When writing dates in English I like "4 February 2001" or
"4 Feb 2001" since it reads easily and still puts day, month, year
in a sane order.
I tried to look up the standard itself at the ISO website but
found that I would have to pay 104 Swiss Francs to download the
pdf file.
--
Thomas Hood
--- original message ---
Hi Randy.
>> - * Version : 11 28.3.01
>> + * Version : 12 5.10.01
> nitpicking, i'm sure, but:
> 5.10.01 could have several meanings, usually depending on geographic
> location etc., and there is an ISO standard (8601) which says:
> The international standard date notation is YYYY-MM-DD
There is also another ISO standard (I forget the number) which states
that the international standard date notation is any of...
DD.MM.YYYY (European)
MM/DD/YYYY (American)
YYYY-MM-DD (Japanese)
...with the punctuation character specifying the one in use. I note that
the dates as originally quoted above are clearly consistant with this
standard, so see no problem myself.
Personally, I prefer to use the DD-MMM-YYYY format myself, where MMM in
the three-letter English abbreviation for the month in question, and
there is thus no room for misreading it as something else.
> I'd prefer not to be confused by the '>' quoted notation above,
> although I don't mind the dots instead of hyphens.
I'm so used to > quoting in emails that anything else gets me confused.
Best wishes from Riley.