- ISO 8601 is paywalled
- RFC allows a space instead of a T (e.g. 2020-12-09 16:09:...) which is nicer to read.
Top post of the hour is about an RFC from >20 years ago.
This is worse than the Linux stuff.
Y'all a bunch of nerds
this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2023
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A space is more problematic than a T tho
Skill issue
Any other day I'd see this get laughs, but I guess people are bitchier this time of day.
I'd write down the ISO timecode I'm talking about, but I can't afford it.
You've just become the nemesis of the entire unix-like userbase for praising the space.
What's the issue with the space?
On the command line, space is what separates each argument. If a path contains a space, you either have to quote the entire path, or use an escape character (e.g. the \ character in most shells, the backtick in Powershell because Microsoft is weird, or the character's hexadecimal value), otherwise the path will be passed to the command as separate arguments. For example, cat hello world.txt would try to print the files hello and world.txt.
It is a good practice to minimize the character set used by filenames, and best to only use English alphanumeric characters and certain symbols like -, _, and .. Non-printable characters (like the lower half of ASCII), weird diacritics (like ő or ű), ligatures, or any characters that could be misinterpreted by a program should be avoided.
This is why byte-safe encodings, like base64 or percent-encoding, are important. Transmitting data directly as text runs the risk of mangling the characters because some program misinterpreted them.
but what does the command line matter for dates? sure every once in a while you'll have to pass a date as an argument on the command line but I think usually that kind of data is handled by APIs without human intervention, so once these are set up properly, I don't see the problem
rsync -a "somedir" "somedir_backup_$(date)"
If the date command returns an RFC-3339-formatted string, the filename will contain a space. If, for example, you want to iterate over the files using for d in $(find...) and forget to set $IFS properly, it can cause issues.
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The difference:
2023-12-12T21:18Z is ISO 8601 format
2023-12-12 21:18 is RFC 3339 Format
A small change
ISO 8601 also allows for some weird shit. Like 2023-W01-1 which actually means 2022-12-31. There's a lot of cruft in that standard.
Doesn't the ISO also includes time periods? Because if it does, those are amazing.
Without any explanation, you should be able to decypher these periods just by looking at them:
- P1Y
- P6M2D
- P1DT4H
- PT42M
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This is the killer for me. Most people promote ISO 8601 as a "definitive" date structure, when it actually supports a lot of different formats. What they actually want is usually RFC 3339.
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That Z is doing a lot of work.
Z indicates UTC. Alternatively,
2023-12.12T21:18-05 for time zone as central. The UTC time zone code at the end just tells you where the time is taken from. Usually Z is used since, well, it’s “universal,” but having a +13 or -06 or whatever else brings context, and allows computers to synchronize the string of text into a comparable time for event logs and such.
Yes. The RFC is missing something that explicitly indicates the time zone. The Z is a great unambiguous way of saying "yes, this is UTC."
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I definitely don't agree that the RFC is easier to read, the two numbers can appear to be one at a quick glance without a separator.
But there is a separator between the numbers: the same one that also very reliably separates the words in this comment
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Its funny because everything about ISO 8601 is covered on its Wikipedia article. Very few people need to spend the francs to need the spec.
You HAVE to read the spec if you want to be compliant, you can't just hope every detail is on wikipedia
Also, even if you fully respect the specs, I assume you can't get certified as "compliant" by ISO if you didn't pay for the specs ?
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If you want to be compliant for a standard you need to have a copy of it. Luckily it's only companies that really need to buy them
Which means the companies using the specs pay the company making the specs for everyone (companies and people) to use.
That sounds fair, but I wouldn't be surprised if capitalism fucked it up anyhow.
I don’t even know what ISO 8601 is, but I agree with the sentiment
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601
Date format that is both human readable and for the most part sortable as strings (assuming you are using the same time zone).
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Yeah I like a girl who is firm on her choice of date time format....😂😂😂😂
I personally have a list of 14 RFCs I won't compromise on when it's a first date
Please be serious and give me that list! Please be real!
Edit: guys, if they don't answer, they might just missed the question. They might be real. BELIEVE!!!
Do you care to share them?
Linux sex tips approved
Well, they cover very different formats: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FdzPYu-UAAADHEq.jpg
TIL, didn’t know that
wtf does this even mean?
This is about the old argument around how date strings are formatted.
MMDDYYYY vs YYYYMMDD, spaces or hyphens may differ. It's an old and passionate argument (mostly due to the American approach of starting with the month being insane)
Both ISO8601 and RFC3339 are YYYY-MM-DD. The difference is in how the date and time are separated.
Than you! I was shooting from the hip half asleep (the classic 'gosh I'm so clever' moment for me...)
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I've worked with this one project for so long I can now read +%s timestamps.
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ISO standards need to be purchased to be viewed, RFCs are freely available requests for comment. The RFC 3339 format is effectively the same is the ISO format, except RFC 3339 allows for a space between the date and time components whereas the ISO format uses a "T" character to separate date and time components.
If you want to get real weird, RFCs are not standards but rather a request for other participants to comment on the proposal. RFCs tend to be pointed towards as de facto standards though, even before they become a BCP or STD.
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How could it be paywalled? I've never heard of anyone paying ISO to be able to write the date and time in a handy way.
What he means is, if you want to download the document from ISO that describes the standard, you have to pay a fee. Here's their store page: click.
It's about 190 USD for a 38 page document describing the rules of the standard. There's another document with extensions for a similar price. Quite pricey for a PDF file obviously, and the RFC is free to download.
On the other hand, no one in the history of time has gone "hmm, I don't know how ISO-8601 works, let me go buy this document from the ISO store to figure it out." Most people just call datetime.isoformat() or whatever their library function is called.
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