Let me put in a plug for separate DATE and DATETIME types. I don't know whether the datetime list has discussed this, and the last time I tried to join the list, I kept getting some weird error.
Dates are like the integers. Datetimes are like the real numbers. The existence of timezones and dst makes the two systems rather incompatible, so one is not really a subset of the other. See Date::Simple for an implementation of the DATE type without (most) time and tz complications. I firmly agree with the gist of John Siracusa's original message. I hope no one here underestimates the difficulty when times are involved. Thanks -John Dave Rolsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> on 01/21/2003 01:14:02 PM To: John Siracusa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> cc: DBI Dev <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (bcc: John Tobey/Intdata) Subject: Re: Integrating date and time parsing and formatting On Tue, 21 Jan 2003, John Siracusa wrote: > On 1/21/03 3:38 AM, H.Merijn Brand wrote: > > FWIW *if* there should be a default date format for DBI, *please* make it > > universal: YYYYMMDD and not MMDDYYYY or MM/DD/YYYY, because you have no idea > > how much irritation this arouses in European countries. > > Like I said: > > > On 1/20/03 11:34 AM, John Siracusa wrote: > >> It would be nice if we had a "canonical" date/time representation. That's > >> part of what the new DateTime modules being discussed on the > >> [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list hope to deliver. > > I don't think we'll have a standardized "interchange format" for dates > until/unless the new DateTime project matures. But such a thing is not > required for database-independent code, provided you're not trying to move > data from one database to another. All that's required by my proposal is > that each DBD's formatter be able to read whatever is returned from its own > parser: And what would be returned is a DateTime object, which would have methods like "year", "month", and so on. That way there's no need to say that the universal format is X. That's not really possible anyway, since each DBMS has its own default date formats. -dave /*======================= House Absolute Consulting www.houseabsolute.com =======================*/
