this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2026
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Because one lives the other should not long live Y-M-D
NO. You need a character per digit and you always want the leading 0 shown.
YYYY-MM-DD
At least it makes my folders really easy to sort through...
Only if you leave the leading zeros!
…or your file manager is smart enough to do numeric sorting
you should never make the assumption that software you use is smart, or even not complete garbage
…and file managers aren’t the only things that display lists of files. low-level tooling should not be “smart” beyond the most basic sorting without specifically being told first
I only objected to the use of “only” in the comment above. I’d like to object to "never" as well.
...And you assume you will only ever look at those files with that file manager forever...
There is no downside to writing the leading zeroes pretty much anywhere except when aesthetics matter (event flyers, etc)
I am a big fan of ISO8601, and I only objected to your use of "only" in the comment above.
ISO 8601 is the only correct way.
OP's graph uses slashes.
Dashes would remove all the confusion.
No because it's the global format that typically uses periods.
D.M.Y (normal)
Y-M-D (superior)
M/D/Y (mental illness)
Mixing up the formats and denominators makes this mess even worse.
you should also always specify YYYY-MM-DD because often M and D ignores leading zeros, YY means the 2 digit suffix, and Y… well, i don’t even know what that is but i’m sure it’s something less specific than YYYY
if we’re going to be picky about being clear about things, let’s be truly clear about things