John Roddick

In use at the present time are a multitude of methods for specifying the date. They can be categorised as:

• Arithmetically convenient but intuitively difficult (e.g., Julian Dates, VMSdates, etc.).
• Ambiguous (e.g., dd/mm/yy versus mm/dd/yy, yymmdd versus ddmmyy, and dates with two digit years).
• Arithmetically inconvenient, but intuitively easy (e.g., ``dd-mmm-yyyy,'' ``ddmmmyyyy,'' and ``mmmmmmmmm dd, yyyy'').

For the purpose of a benchmark formats in the latter category must be used as a benchmark must be, above all, unambiguous. Formats in this latter set are characterised by the

• easy recognition of the day, month and year component,
• unambiguous representation of the data in each component, and
• easy identification as a date as opposed to some other molecular datatype.

The following standard is suggested:

				 dd-mmm-yyyy 




where 		 dd   = day of the month, 


mmm  = alpha month from the set ``Jan, Feb, 


Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, 


Oct, Nov, Dec,'' and 


yyyy = year with leading century.

The set of alpha months is chosen as the first three letters of the long form of the month name in English, thus ``Jul'' is used in preference to ``Jly.'' Four digit years are adopted given the proximity of the turn of the century. The hyphen separator is arbitrary but is used to distinguish between the ``/'' common used in dd/mm/yy family formats.