American Date System

[Mr. Tristen]

Why in the name of god do American's see some logic in placing the months before the days? Doing a web design project and its proving to be one major pain in the arse... If you don't know what I'm talking about, Americans list the month before the day, so todays date would be written 01.27.2005... its just goddam stupid... does anyone know a good explanation for it?

While we're on the subject, does it not make a lot more sense to completely reverse the way we write the date, so today would be 2005.01.27 - I do this anyway when storing dates in a database as it becomes nice and simple to sort queries in chronological or reverse chronological order. For example in our current system 12.01.1111 would be rated as a higher value than 01.01.2005 simply because of the leading number 1, despite being a thousand years ago, but if you write the date in reverse you get the correct order.

Everywhere else I can think of you put the largest measurment of the thing being measured first... eg in time they do Hours (largest), minutes then seconds (smallest), so why not with dates.

[/utterly pointless rant]

[Stripey]

Why in the name of god do American's see some logic in placing the months before the days? Doing a web design project and its proving to be one major pain in the arse... If you don't know what I'm talking about' date=' Americans list the month before the day, so todays date would be written 01.27.2005... its just goddam stupid... does anyone know a good explanation for it?

[/quote']

probably the same reason they twisted the english language and called it their own, i.e they are fucking morons.

While we're on the subject' date=' does it not make a lot more sense to completely reverse the way we write the date, so today would be 2005.01.27 - I do this anyway when storing dates in a database as it becomes nice and simple to sort queries in chronological or reverse chronological order. For example in our current system 12.01.1111 would be rated as a higher value than 01.01.2005 simply because of the leading number 1, despite being a thousand years ago, but if you write the date in reverse you get the correct order.

[/quote']

What kind of database are you using, because that strikes me as being a bit odd.

[David]

they do it because the americans are backwards, they drive on the wrong side of the road too...

dates seem to wor the way they are, you get the (generally) most useful bit first, as most people tend to know the month and year, but not always the date, so you read in order of usefulness. this dosent work with time though, as the hours as needed just as often as the minutes, if you have been sitting doing something for a long time, the hours will be of more use then minutes, or if you are boiling an egg the minutes would be more important, there is no obvious way...

your way works best for catalouging stuff though (via computers) the same way as if you number tracks on a cd you often have to number them 01... instead of 1... so the computer picks up 3 comes before 10 (if you just used the digits 3 and 10, the 10 comes first, since the first number is 1)

David

[Mr. Tristen]

What kind of database are you using' date=' because that strikes me as being a bit odd.[/quote']

mySQL... its not so much the database thats the problem as it has plenty of handy features for organising by dates etc, but its more what happens once you've taken the information out of the database (in this case into a php enviroment) where the problems start. There are ways round it, I know that, but I've just found it easier from day one to just put the date in reverse order when it goes into the database, or in some cases use a unix epoch or similar.

Have to admit databases are not my strongest side... I know enough to get the job done happily, but theres probably far more they could be doing to help me sometimes...

your way works best for catalouging stuff though (via computers) the same way as if you number tracks on a cd you often have to number them 01... instead of 1... so the computer picks up 3 comes before 10 (if you just used the digits 3 and 10' date=' the 10 comes first, since the first number is 1)[/quote']

Yeah, making sure there are the correct number of figures in the months and days columns is necessary to maintain a backwards date system.

[Stripey]

mySQL... its not so much the database thats the problem as it has plenty of handy features for organising by dates etc' date=' but its more what happens once you've taken the information out of the database (in this case into a php enviroment) where the problems start. There are ways round it, I know that, but I've just found it easier from day one to just put the date in reverse order when it goes into the database, or in some cases use a unix epoch or similar.

Have to admit databases are not my strongest side... I know enough to get the job done happily, but theres probably far more they could be doing to help me sometimes...[/quote']

if you use the DATE datatype for your date column, you can sort the output from mysql in your SELECT query, e.g

SELECT * FROM table ORDER BY date

where "date" is the column you are storing the date in...

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/date-and-time-types.html

if that's any help

[Mr. Tristen]

Heh, this just goes to prove how much databases are holding me back. My php is reaching very high end stuff now, but my lack of knowledge of databases complicates matters. Did 3 years of the bloody things at uni, so I can design fairly efficient databases, removing repeating data blah blah you get the idea. I have a nice big mySQL manual I'm trawling through at the moment.

While you're here, if I set a field to be of type Date, how would I insert a date into it from the php end, and what format does if come out as (eg when I get the data using the usual select query, does the date just come out as a string formated XXXX:XX:XX or as an array with the three elements?) Sorry if I don't make much sense, the problem of being self taught is you can learn everything perfectly, but you don't really know the terminology.

Also, what purpose do months really serve? A day is a rotation of the planet, a year is the rotation of the planet around the sun... months seem kinda needless. May as well just have the day number and skip the months. Right, from now on as far as I'm concerned to day is 2004.027

[Stripey]

Heh' date=' this just goes to prove how much databases are holding me back. My php is reaching very high end stuff now, but my lack of knowledge of databases complicates matters. Did 3 years of the bloody things at uni, so I can design fairly efficient databases, removing repeating data blah blah you get the idea. I have a nice big mySQL manual I'm trawling through at the moment.

While you're here, if I set a field to be of type Date, how would I insert a date into it from the php end, and what format does if come out as (eg when I get the data using the usual select query, does the date just come out as a string formated XXXX:XX:XX or as an array with the three elements?) Sorry if I don't make much sense, the problem of being self taught is you can learn everything perfectly, but you don't really know the terminology.[/quote']

the format is YYYY-MM-DD, when you are putting in a date or extracting one

INSERT INTO table (date_column,some_other_column) VALUES ("2005-01-01","foo");

have a look at the TIMESTAMP datatype and the NOW() function aswell in your manual, you can automatically set the date/time for the entry when you insert data, based on the system clock.

[Doc]

probably the same reason they twisted the english language and called it their own' date=' i.e they are fucking morons.

[/quote']

That because it is their own. Remember who created the US. Pots and kettle spring to mind too.

[RicoAUBL]

thats funny

cos i was having the same problem with a database the other day... in fact... yesterday

some of the dates were in US format and some were in UK format

but when you put a date in it translates it so it says 28-Jan-2005 (this would come from 1/28/05)

however the csv file had about 100+ records so i never really looked at all of them

and a ton of the dates came out wrong... cos it was trying to deal with 28/1/05 in US fomat

which would be the 28th Month, 1st Day, 2005....

thankfully excel saved the day

it's only confusing when you have 1/1/05 which is Jan 1st in both formats

or maybe 5/6/05 which is either 6th of May or 5th of June....

o_O

so....

do american people say "February 12th" because they put their dates in that format

or do they say that because their dates are in that format

and who decided that it should be the other way around

what's the reasoning behind it?!

thats what i'd like to know