I am against the proposal to change 6!:0 for several reasons. I think primitives, especially foreign conjunctions, should be kept as simple as possible commensurate with their function, and formatting makes them frivolously more complicated. In particular, it is hard to predict what a user wants as a date format: see for example
http://www.penguin-soft.com/penguin/man/1/date.html In my opinion, formatting like this should be done by libraries rather than coded in the interpreter. The current version gets the current time in the current locale. I would prefer milliseconds and locale (maybe 2!: xx ?), but the current format will suffice for most purposes, which I imagine to be timestamping and calendrical calculations. Timestamping seems foolproof, but there have been problems as computers get faster. Some database systems dutifully timestamp events by the current time and a sequence number. If events come in too quickly, the speed limit is exceeded, and events get out of order. The vendor's solution? Underclock the computer. Calendrical issues are much more complicated. To mention a few: number of days in a year, leap years, leap seconds, random attempts to recalibrate, no year 0, date on which the year begins, lunar and lunisolar calendars.... In short: don't alter 6!:0 and let time formatting be done by libraries. Best wishes, John ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
