I want to support John's suggestion.

A format like '19960415T083000' is readable if someone wants to look in some
sources, but normally you would display such a time stamp in a GUI far away
from its internal representation.

And there are no characters which would make problems in filenames, I think;
but:
	Why needs the file stamp format to be directly - without converting -
compatible with file name formats at all?

Greetings,

Stephan

sr (stephan.rudlof at ipk.fhg.de)
   "Genius doesn't work on an assembly line basis.
    You can't simply say, 'Today I will be brilliant.'"
    -- Kirk, "The Ultimate Computer", stardate 4731.3

>
>
> If we're reworking filestamps, why not make them ISO 8601
> compliant?  Where a relatively clear international standard
> for date-time combinations exists, shouldn't we  use it?
>
> For example, 8:30 AM on April 15, 1996 (local time) would
> be written as 19960415T083000.  The same time in UTC-based
> time would be written as: 19960415T083000Z (with a strong
> preference for stamps being constructed with UTC times!).
>
> Besides, ISO 8601 is Y2K compliant!  ;}
>
> Blessings!
>
> John Tobler
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From:    Jason McVay
> Sent:    Tue, 19 Oct 1999 15:23:12 -0500
> To:      squeak at cs.uiuc.edu
> Subject: [ENH] BetterFileStamp
>
>
> from the preamble:
>
> i don't know about the rest of you, but i file things out
> often. this
> changeSet provides a better (IMHO) filestamp than the
> current one. it has
> the following format: yymmdd at hhmm
>
> everything is zero-padded if necessary and the hours are on
> military (19 =
> 7pm) time. you can easily find the most recent file (if the
> files are sorted
> by name)
>
> --jason mcvay
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________________
> Get Visto!  Groups, event calendars, email, and more...
> Check it out @ http://www.visto.com/info
>
>
>