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by qznc 3958 days ago
Use minus instead of slash and you have ISO 8601: yyyy-mm-dd
2 comments

I had - I think - independently come up with this format for naming log files, and I was so very, very happy when I found out it is an ISO standard.

A little disappointed, too, because every single time I have a great idea like this, I find out that somebody else had it before me. But still.

Sold.
8601 also gives you proper week numbering (which Europeans tend to like) + weeks start on Monday, after the weekend.
Well it's all the weekend. Saturday is the last end of the week and Sunday is the front end of the week.
In the US perhaps, not in Europe
In the UK too traditionally, although that’s changing (by convention).
Yet, in America, people say things like "do you have plans for the weekend?" Or, "What did you do last weekend?"

Nobody ever says, "Do you have plans for the upcoming two days which, respectively, constitute the end of this week and the start of the next one?"

So, Americans and Brits are inconsistent. They have "the weekend" which is a block of two days when salaried people with regular working hours don't work; and they have Sunday as not the week end, but rather the beginning; or the "front end" of the next week. Which means that the two days cannot be the weekend; they are two different ends of two different weeks.

> that's changing (by convention)

It's changing because people have to confront the above reasoning and realize that a week beginning in the middle of something that they have been calling "the weekend" for decades is silly.

In some countries the weekend isn't Saturday and Sunday though. So the start of the week is kind of arbitrary.
Saudi Arabia used to have it's weekend on Thursday & Friday. Recently they've switched to Friday & Saturday.
I believe in my entire life I've encountered exactly one situation in which the day that is defined as the first day of the week actually made a difference to anything: my kids' swim school schedule, where Week N of the term runs from Sunday through to the following Saturday inclusive.

Since the working week (and the school week) here starts on Monday regardless of whether Sunday or Monday is regarded as the first day of the week, it seems to have always been a distinction without a difference to me.