True, the hyphen and the colon are both optional characters (but not the T or sign in time zone offset). Continuing my previous example, 20090312T1545-0400 is equally valid, although, in my opinion. FAR less readable. The separators are VERY important for human readability. I'm not sure they should be optional if human readability is intended.
--- On Fri, 3/13/09, STANLEY DOORE <[email protected]> wrote: > From: STANLEY DOORE <[email protected]> > Subject: [USMA:43724] Re: Date Time > To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]> > Date: Friday, March 13, 2009, 9:53 AM > Point well taken. Removing the colon is not a problem > either if a leading zero is used for single digit hours. My > cell phone is set to display both local time and UTC > simultaneously on its face. > For example it displays two time selected by me: > "London Fri Mar 13:44pm" and "Current time > zone Fri Mar 13 9:44am" simultaneously. A 24-hour > display would be much better. > Stan Doore > . > > > ----- Original Message ----- From: "John M. > Steele" <[email protected]> > To: "U.S. Metric Association" > <[email protected]> > Sent: Thursday, March 12, 2009 3:46 PM > Subject: [USMA:43717] Re: Date Time > > > > > > > > Yes. Technically that is a date field followed by a > time field. One aspect of ISO8601 that gets a bit unwieldy > is that a space is not permitted. In a combined date/time > field, the separator "T" must be used without > space. It will be about 3:45 PM EDT by the time I finish > this note. > > > > Properly that is 2009-03-12T15:45 is I wish to > designate local time, or 2009-03-12T15:45-04:00 if I wish to > designate my time zone (relative to UTC). It is a bit > lengthy for human readability, but ISO 8601 is really for > machine parsing. The spaces that would improve human > readability are non compliant (although many choose to > non-comply). > > > > "Z" (Zulu) is reserved for UTC time zone, so > above could be written 2009-03-12T19:45Z. > > > > --- On Wed, 3/11/09, STANLEY DOORE > <[email protected]> wrote: > > > >> From: STANLEY DOORE <[email protected]> > >> Subject: [USMA:43715] Date Time > >> To: "U.S. Metric Association" > <[email protected]> > >> Date: Wednesday, March 11, 2009, 6:18 AM > >> This morning (2009-03-11 edt) on Fox & Friends > TV > >> program, they showed a video clip from Japan of a > volcano > >> eruption which used the yyyy-mm-dd hh:ss format. > >> I believe the content was: 2009-03-10 ??:??. > It was > >> very easy to read and understand since the data > were > >> sequential. Don't know the time zone. > >> > >> Stan Doore > >
