R
Dear List, Many of us write software programmes (or programs as the case may be) that use calendar dates. Please consider users overseas when you write such applications. I would suggest internally that your application use ISO 8601 format dates -- YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss (with optional T delimiter between the date and time) and that they then read appropriate regional settings or use configuration options for their displayed date. In case you think that this is nitpicky, we recently had an industrial automation package (software and hardware) that originated from an automation solutions supplier in Germany. One part of the package expressed dates in a fixed DD.MM.YYYY or DD/MM/YYYY format (the European format). Another part expressed dates in a fixed MM/DD/YYYY format (the American format). At this point, one wonders what 07/06/2001 means -- 07 June 2001 or 06 July 2001. Finally another portion of the package read configuration settings and was able to use YYYY-MM-DD. It was actually possible to print out things from the software portion that showed dates in two of the three possible formats. There was no way of changing this. With the international nature of our businesses, I think that this is an important goal to strive for. Also, when you buy a product from somewhere and the expiry date is 01/06/01 what does that mean? RJ