marshg246
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- Jul 12, 2015
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Dates where the month is 12 or less and the day is 12 or less cause confusion between the US and much of the rest of the world. Since a fully written out day is usually like March 12, 1950 in the US we would write 03/12/1950 or 3/12/50. Much of the rest of the world writes 12/3/50 (or variants with the day first). As a programmer, I hate both as neither is sortable and converting from how dates are actually stored is a PITA. 1950-03-12 or 19500312 sorts and is clear and easy to break combine into the stored number. Of course I'm not advocating to use that. here. Generally a date/time is 1950-03-12 07:20:00 (7:20am on March 12, 1950) which is completely sortable as text or with the dashed and colon removed as text, or stored as a number (as they are internally)
BTW, the US is a melting pot and not all people US month/day/year so it can be confusing here too.
There are many ways to write a date that cannot be confused:
Most of the worlds military: 12MAR50 - 12MAR1950 - 12-MAR-1950 (two digits years was a big problem at Y2K time!)
Written out: March 12, 1950 - 12 March 50 (again, two digits years are not clear but for almost everything here they would be)
Semi-Computer, sortable: 1950-MAR-12
In other words, keep the textual full or short month and use the 4-digit year and everyone should understand.
BTW, the US is a melting pot and not all people US month/day/year so it can be confusing here too.
There are many ways to write a date that cannot be confused:
Most of the worlds military: 12MAR50 - 12MAR1950 - 12-MAR-1950 (two digits years was a big problem at Y2K time!)
Written out: March 12, 1950 - 12 March 50 (again, two digits years are not clear but for almost everything here they would be)
Semi-Computer, sortable: 1950-MAR-12
In other words, keep the textual full or short month and use the 4-digit year and everyone should understand.