Most likely because sorting is easier when the year comes first, followed by the month then day. Putting the year last creates filing and sorting problems.
Jerry ________________________________ From: STANLEY DOORE <[email protected]> To: U.S. Metric Association <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, April 8, 2009 7:43:52 AM Subject: [USMA:44475] Re: ISO date format The ISO yyyymmdd date format has been used in US Government weather archive records since the 1800s when the Hollerith punched card was invented. Stan Doore ----- Original Message ----- From: Pat Naughtin To: U.S. Metric Association Sent: Monday, April 06, 2009 3:44 PM Subject: [USMA:44457] Re: ISO date format On 2009/04/06, at 10:08 PM, John M. Steele wrote: The order yyyymmdd is used a lot with various separators in computers and digital media files as alphabetic sorting rules sort into data order. In ISO8601, the only allowable separator in date format is a hyphen, or no separator, so, at best, they are using "mutant ISO8601." --- On Mon, 4/6/09, STANLEY DOORE <[email protected]> wrote: From: STANLEY DOORE <[email protected]> Subject: [USMA:44434] ISO date format To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]> Date: Monday, April 6, 2009, 1:43 AM On Sunday, a Fox News Channel clip from Prague television showed the date format of the clip as (yyyy.mm.dd) i.e. 2009.04.05 Isn't it interesting that others are moving to the ISO standard date format? Stan Doore Dear John and Stan, I suspect that dates in the ISO 8601 format are gradually becoming more popular as soon as people realise how useful they are in any computer environment. As an example, I store drafts of the Metrication matters newsletter (like this one for this month) as: mm-newsletter-2009-04 I don't need to have the day on the end because the Metrication matters newsletter is sent on the 10th day of each month. The ISO 8601 format means that I can sort all of the back copies in date order by sorting any list either alphabetically or by date simply and easily. You can see the full list of the old Metrication matters newsletters — in date order — at the bottom of http://www.MetricationMatters.com/newsletter.html Cheers, Pat Naughtin PO Box 305 Belmont 3216, Geelong, Australia Phone: 61 3 5241 2008 Metric system consultant, writer, and speaker, Pat Naughtin, has helped thousands of people and hundreds of companies upgrade to the modern metric system smoothly, quickly, and so economically that they now save thousands each year when buying, processing, or selling for their businesses. Pat provides services and resources for many different trades, crafts, and professions for commercial, industrial and government metrication leaders in Asia, Europe, and in the USA. Pat's clients include the Australian Government, Google, NASA, NIST, and the metric associations of Canada, the UK, and the USA. See http://www.metricationmatters.com/ or to get the free 'Metrication matters' newsletter go to: http://www.metricationmatters.com/newsletter to subscribe.
