[ben_w]

In a moment of whimsy I briefly considered a date format where digits were sorted alphabetically.

2026-07-02-16-31-52 -> -----00011222235667

Hopefully it will remain a nonsense and never be seen in the wild, unlike the phone number field which I found on a real website which responded to scroll events to increase and decrease the value it contained.

[card_zero]

Well that's just totally ambiguous. What you should do instead is treat the date as one long number and present its factors, for instance 2⁴⋅11⋅7649⋅15050023, much more practical.

[dhosek]

I rarely have cause to give people my phone number anymore, but I always like to give it as three billion, 128 million, …

[ButlerianJihad]

Most every personal phone number I've obtained has had a spelling, and a good logical spelling, which isn't really the norm for personal phone numbers.

In fact, the first time I signed up for my own line, it happened unintentionally, and it was only after Pacific Bell had installed the line that I figured out it spelled something, and I informed my father and it was hilarious (the spelling was "BUG-BLOW").

[reaperducer]

I always like to give it as three billion, 128 million, …

Reminds me of when I tell Siri, "Play 2-G-B Sydney" and she responds, "Now playing two gigabytes."

[tremon]

That's not alphabetically, that's asciibetically. The alphabetical (English) sort would be something like ::--51176632222000

[rich_sasha]

How about just sort the numbers from biggest to smallest?

2026-07-02 16:45 becomes

2026-45-16-06-02

Bonus points for using a very confusing separator... Maybe {?

[btschaegg]

> Bonus points for using a very confusing separator... Maybe {?

I vote for "end of unit" (ASCII 0x1F).

[ben_w]

May I suggest "bell" (0x07)?

[YeGoblynQueenne]

Let's keep the bell for Christmas.

[debesyla]

Wait, can this format be transformed back to the "normal" format? If so, then it could be kinda viable for some operations... :thinking_emoji:

[jstanley]

No, it can't be transformed back because it has lost information.

2025-06 and 2026-05 both have the same digits, for example.

[mkopinsky]

No, it's an unreversible hash function. I use this for passwords - no one will ever be able to figure out what ehntru2 was originally.

[dhosek]

I feel confident it would be one of the six permutations of 2, the, run.

[ben_w]

hunter2

[ben_w]

No, because "12".sort_by_digits() == "21".sort_by_digits()

[SpaceNoodled]

Well it's a NUMBER

[ben_w]

https://imgur.com/gallery/phone-numbers-are-not-numbers-defi...