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Calendar Format?

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Mike - K8LH

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What's the 'common' calendar format in different parts of the world? Here in the states we typically represent the date using a MM/DD/YY format but I seem to recall that a DD/MM/YY format is preferred in Europe.

Mike
 
There are only 2 logical ways to do it. Big endien or little endien. America does some sort of middle endien.:D :D

Here in Aus and Europe, it is normally dd/mm/yy. (little endien)

Mike.
 
Apparently some of the Scandinavian countries do it by far the 'best' way, yyyy/mm/dd which means you can easily do simple comparisons for which date is later than another.

I've always wondered about the reasoning behind the American method?, can anyone explain why it's done that way?.

From a computing point of view, I always used to convert dates to Julian numbers, this gives you the easiest calculations on them, and it's easily converted back to any format you want, including the day of the week.
 
I agree with Nigel, yyy/mm/dd is by far the best format; the largest unit should always be first, just like any other system.
 
That method certainly lends itself well for 'sort' and 'compare' operations, as Nigel mentioned.

Thanks a lot guys. I will take these methods into account when designing software...

Mike
 
The US uses dd/mm/yy, which i honestly have no idea why. That is like asking why we still use the customary system. :rolleyes:
 
Marks256 said:
The US uses dd/mm/yy, which i honestly have no idea why. That is like asking why we still use the customary system. :rolleyes:

I thought the US used mm/dd/yy.

What is the customary system?

Mike.
 
I think you should get us used to StarDates but please include a cross reference chart.
hehehe.
 
the customary system is inches, feet, yards, miles, gallons, quarts, etc...


Yeah, i guess you are right, pommie.... :D it IS mm/dd/yy... :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: that just goes to show how much of an upstanding citizen i am... :D
 
That would make me 2"6' tall.
I always thought I was 5' 14" tall.
 
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Pommie said:
I thought that was the imperial system.

could be. I was always taught calling it the "customary system" in school. Don't get me started on our education system.... :rolleyes:
 
This has always driven me nuts with operating systems. I go by what I consider to be the "correct" MM/DD/YYYY or MM/DD/YY method, even though I live in Canada. If I tell any OS, either windoze or linux, where I live, it uses stupid DD/MM/YYYY. Where those programmers got the idea that Canada uses that backward system I'll never know. I have to always remember to tell the OS that I live in the US. :D

Oh ya, though I'm Canadian I've always thought saying Zed for the letter Z was stupid. It's pronounced Zee, fer Pete's sake! :p
 
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Asia (most) uses yy mm dd, which is global to local, just like the way they address letters, which makes a lot more sense than the way we address letters.
 
gregmcc said:
I've never understood the yyyy/mm/dd method :)
It makes sense though, every other mathematical system lists the largest units first, e.g. time: hh:mm:ss.ms, distance miles feet inches, mass: tones stone pound ounces
 
Mike said:
That method certainly lends itself well for 'sort' and 'compare' operations, as Nigel mentioned.

Thanks a lot guys. I will take these methods into account when designing software...

Mike

Internationally that's the standard. I've been programming professionally and internationally for around ten years and working with open source software projects for longer and find that it's just easier to go with this system, especially if your software has to interact with other software written by other people.

It also means one less thing that people will bug you about if you decide to open-source or shareware the project. :)

This might be interesting reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601 Then again I'm a sad, sad man who thinks stuff like that is interesting.


Torben
 
I appreciate the input guys. I'm trying to figure out what calendar display format options to provide via jumpers on a Clock/Calendar project. The circuit will support up to three jumpers (not shown) and will use an Allegro A6275 constant current serial-to-parallel sinking driver IC instead of an MIC5821 IC in order to eliminate the segment current limiting resistors.

**broken link removed**
 
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