Subject: Re: DATE-OBS='31/12/99'

From: davis at space.mit.edu (John E. Davis)
Date: 9 Jul 1996 21:40:59 GMT

On 3 Jul 1996 09:58:08 -0400, William Pence <pence at tetra.gsfc.nasa.gov>
wrote:
 : in addition to the current dd/mm/yy format.  Thus all the following
 : examples would be legal:
 : 
 :      DATE-OBS= '24/06/98' 
 :      DATE-OBS= '2010-02-13T13:53:10.3Z' 
 :      DATE-OBS= '2010-02-13'

If the statement,

   ``Reading the data values from a FITS file should not require
   decoding any more than the first eight characters of a character
   string value of a keyword.''

from NOST 100-1.0, section 5.3.2.1 on character string formats applies
then there could be trouble.  Perhaps this statement should be changed
to something more reasonable to specify that ALL characters with the
exception of trailing whitespace of a character string are meaningful.

-- 
John E. Davis                   Center for Space Research/AXAF Science Center
617-258-8119                    MIT 37-662c, Cambridge, MA 02139
http://space.mit.edu/~davis