[Zope3-dev] Re: date parsing: explicit is better

[Shane Hathaway]

Steve Alexander wrote:
>> I have no over view over all date formats but does not the usage of 
>> dots inside the date mean DD.MM.YYYY and not MM.DD.YYYY. In
>> understanding the US notation with '-' implies MM-DD-YYYY. But I am
>> not sure if this right :)
> 
> 
> That's a very subtle distinction. I'd call that a very subtle form of 
> explicitness ;-)
> 
> I have seen British dates written with "/", "." and "-" as separators, 
> in order from most common to least common.
> 
> I would much rather see an explicit API than rely on the use of a 
> particular separator. Specifically, I don't think 11-05-2002 is 
> necessarily the same date as 05.11.2002. It all depends on locale and 
> conventions.

Ooh, ooh, I smell a new method for the locale service. 
ILocaleService.parseDate() or somesuch would return a date given a text 
string, raising an error if it's ambiguous.  This would even let us deal 
with non-US month names, as in "05-OUT-02" (Portuguese), or whatever 
unusual conventions people use around the world.

Shane