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

From: thompson at orpheus.nascom.nasa.gov (William Thompson)
Date: 3 Jul 1996 15:15:00 GMT

Preben Grosbol <pgrosbol at eso.org> writes:

	(stuff deleted)

> I finally got the ISO8601:1988/1991 standard document. It defines
>several formats but the most relevant is the 'Calendar date' 
>(ref. 5.2.1) and the 'Combibations of date and time of day
>representations' (ref.5.4.1). The complete representations are:

>                            Basic               Extended
>   Date format             ccyymmdd            ccyy-mm-dd
>   date example            20100213            2010-02-13

>   Date/time (UTC)format   ccyymmddThhmmss.sZ  ccyy-mm-ddThh:mm:ss.sZ
>   date/time example       20100213T135310.3Z  2010-02-13T13:53:10.3Z

>(Actually comma (,) is prefered by ISO but full stop (.) is allowed).
>Due to readability the extended format would be prefered.  The
>ISO standard also define formats for local time and periods of time.

	(more stuff deleted)

I thank Preben Grosbol for his clear explanation of the ISO8601 format.  I
would just like to add that the seconds part of the standard can be extended to
an arbitrary number of significant digits.  For example

	2010-02-13T13:53:10Z
	2010-02-13T13:53:10.3Z
	2010-02-13T13:53:10.31Z
	2010-02-13T13:53:10.312Z
	etc.

Bill Thompson