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Number   :  4426
Date     :  2003-04-24
Author   :  Kan Yabumoto
Subject  :  Re: Date Macro
Size(KB) :  4



Garry wrote:

>Since Windows allows the setting of date formats using m/d/yy,
>mm/dd/yy, yyyy-m-d, etc., etc., I don't see it as being unreasonable
>to allow Xxcopy to support the same scheme other than to discourage
>poor practice. It would seem logical to use the same letter
>conventions as well. i.e. $yy.m.d$ means no leading zero for the day
>and month, $yy-mm-dd$ means leading zeroes. The same logic would also
>apply to $hh-nn-ss$.


Windows has to do it every which way (consistent to their
admirable work in the Arabic and Hebrew support).

Besides my unfavorable opinion on the non-ISO format, I thought
I had a more persuasive reason --- no reasonable designation
(easy-to-remember and short) could be found easily.

Well, I took a look at the keyword set once again. Then,
I realized there is an elegant scheme that can be added.
As a matter of fact, the idea was so neat to my eye, even if
I disagree with all the non-ISO nonsense, I could not resist
adding the support. The hint was already in my own message.
Duh!!! And, Garry's comment trigger the flood.

Here's the list of current macro keywords:

Keyword comment
------------------------------------------------------
YYYY 4-digit year (good for 10000 years)
YY 2-digit year (good for a century)
Y 1-digit year (good for a decade)
MM 2-digit month
MON 3-letter month name
DD 2-digit day
HH 2-digit hour (0-23)
NN 2-digit minute
SS 2-digit second
DATE same as MMDD
TIME same as HHNN
WWW 3-letter day of week name
W 1-digit day of week (Sun:0 - Sat:6)
------------------------------------------------------

New addition
------------------------------------------------------
M 1 or 2 digits month (without leading 0)
D 1 or 2 digits day (without leading 0)
H 1 or 2 digits hour (without leading 0)
N 1 or 2 digits min (without leading 0)
S 1 or 2 digits sec (without leading 0)
------------------------------------------------------

I was already doing YY and Y as a special case of YYYY.
Using the same logic, I could add M for month in one
digit (and two for 10, 11 and 12). Similarly, D for
a single-digit date (and two for 10 and above).
The exactly the same scheme can be applied to H, N and S.

Note: Now, having the non-leading-zero cases makes
the single-digit-year notation look odd.
In that case, Y will denote just the last digit
of the Christian calendar year regardless of
the full value (i.e., always a value 0 - 9).

On the other hand, M, D, H, N, S will always
expand to a full (either one or two digit) value.

I can't stand the ugliness of the result but the
scheme here is quite neat from programming point of view
(that's enough to satisfy my ego as a programmer :-)

OK, in the next release, you will see all the
odd (variable-length) macros for M, D, H, N, S.

Since the keyword matching is done from the longest
matching pattern, we can unambiguously resolve the
difference between D and DD and so on (See the
example in XXTB #24 on how XXCOPY resolves a case
like YYYYYYY).

OK, as a result of all these changes, you can now say

/$m-d-yy$

This is exactly what Doug was asking for. The beauty
of this new feature is that the Europeans can say

/$d.m.yy$

And the "ISO-conforming" Asians will have the ugly
variation, /$yyyy-m-d$.

The extra stuff that I added will accept

/$h:n:s$ (Europeans are free to do /$s:n:h$  )

But, this is so ugly, I will not use it myself.

XXCOPY now even allows you to be stupid

/$mdyy$ this operation is unambiguous but the result
may be ambiguous (11111 -- could be
January 11th or November 1st).


------------------------------------------------------
OT: By the way, Garry, do the Aussies use European
convention?

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=aussie

I was checking the spelling at Dictionary.Com,
It says "Aussie" refers to native Australian
(Aboriginal). I thought it was just a nickname
for Australian.
-----------------------------------------------------

I'm going to post the new version (betatest) v.2.84.1
in the very near future.

Kan Yabumoto



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