std.date proposal

[Lucas Goss]

Fredrik Olsson wrote:
> John C skrev:
>> Who are these people expecting dates to appear in US format, I wonder?
>>
>> A date library that has no notion of locales has no business making 
>> any region-specific assumptions and should just implement ISO8601. 
>> After all, that's what it's for.
>>
>> If you must support a common date format, it should be D/M/Y, which is 
>> used by the vast majority of countries and accepted internationally. 
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar_date
>>
> 
> Ok, let me argue for my point, and they you argue why not :).
> 
> I have chosen the implementation for one single reason; I do as the 
> SQL99 standard does. Instead of inventing my own scheme I have chosen a 
> scheme I know, and is used by many.
> 
> I could dumb it down, and greatly reduced code size, and only allow for 
> ISO 8601 formatting, but as I rewrote the PostgreSQL parser 
> implementation I deliberately kept the SQL way. Because it is a known 
> standard, and allows for some flexibility.

I believe you said this earlier:

 > I intend to do the bare bones, a solid foundation to build on top,
 > and to be easy to do small stuff. Intervals, timezones, and more
 > advanced stuff should be done with wrappers on top.

To me a good "bare bones" base would be the ISO8601 (even though I'm in 
the US), allowing small stuff on top, like the SQL99 stuff. I think a 
lot of libraries try to do to much.