[dimava]

Because this is ISO 8601 date format, the standard date format that intentionally uses dashes to not confuse 25/01/22, 01/22/25 and 22/01/26 which are the same date in different formats

(that's why it uses dashes for dates, as for why it uses / for interval I have no idea)

[thunfisch]

It's using a slash because that's how ISO 8601 defines time intervals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601#Time_intervals

[funnybeam]

Thanks for linking that. I’m a big proponent of using ISO 8601 but had either missed or completely forgotten about it specifying a format for intervals.

Note that ISO also permits a double hyphen as the interval separator which is hugely preferable to me personally and also works with file names (as mentioned in that Wikipedia article)

[account42]

Doesn't look like IOS 8601 allows spaces though so this is still an ad-hoc syntax.

RFC3339 at least lets you replace the ugly T with a space but also doesn't specify any spaces around "/" for ranges.

[dustedcodes]

I know ISO 8601, but that doesn't answer my question. Let me rephrase this, why was a format intuitive to a machine chosen instead of a format which feels more intuitive to a human?

I think YYYY/MM/DD - YYYY/MM/DD will mean the correct thing to many more people than YYYY-MM-DD / YYYY-MM-DD, which I suspect many will interpret as an OR and not a RANGE.

[zamadatix]

EDTF has advantages in less ambiguity. At the same time, Markwhen does also support non-EDTF dates too. The docs do a good job of explaining both https://docs.markwhen.com/syntax/dates-and-ranges.html

Personally I think it goes a little over-flexible on support for non-strict formatted dates to the point it becomes difficult to figure out what a given date string is going to result in rather than feeling easier to use. That's probably part of the reason the primary example uses the clearer format.

[keybored]

> intuitive to machines

Because the “humans” messed up so bad that there weren’t many options left for a simple enough standard.

I would prefer ISO 8601 too over some slight variation which is allegedly more intuitive for homo sapiens sapiens. To keep it simple.

[raziel2p]

Any time I see slashes in dates I do actually have to double-check whether it's DD/MM or MM/DD.

[keybored]

Hyphens.