Re: Timestamp format - Why are seconds required?

The YAML date/time format is not quite ISO8601. For one thing, it allows a
space between the date and the time parts, while ISO8601 requires a "T"
character (which YAML allows but discourages, aka "YUCK"). This can be
technically wiggled around by saying that the space format actually contains
two separate fields, each separately obeying ISO8601 (this is how
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601#Combined_date_and_time_representations
describes
it, anyway).

On the other hand, the basic YAML format doesn't handle durations,
specifying week numbers, ordinal day numbers, specifying only the year and
the month (or only the year), etc. etc. The ISO8601 standard is enormously
flexible that way.

I think that overall the YAML date/time format is a reasonable choice for a
"least common denominator" format which is understood "everywhere".

It does not preclude any application from accepting the full ISO8601
standard format (e.g., an application that has deep focus on date and time
such as a historical database). However, it doesn't make a lot of sense to
expect all/most other applications to bother with these additional cases.

It has been several years and this is the first time I heard someone
complain about making the seconds field mandatory, so I assume this isn't a
widespread concern. The default time resolution of most computer programs is
in seconds, anyway... If this turns out to be a common concern, we could
relax the rules for the basic timestamp type, I guess, but I don't see it
yet.

It is a point often lost that the basic YAML types are just that, the basic
types, and applications are welcome to define additional types where it
makes sense. There is no "one set of types to rule them all" - the whole
implicit/explicit tagging concept was carefully thought out to enable these
sort of tricks which end up allowing people to read/write very clean and
readable YAML files, yet allowing the application to get exactly the data it
wants.


Hope this helps,

Oren Ben-Kiki

On Tue, Oct 25, 2011 at 10:45 AM, Mike <[email protected]> wrote:

> Hello Yaml-Core
>
> While using YAML in an application I am writing, I noticed that YAML
> requires a timestamp of the form "2012-10-25 01:41:00" to include the
> seconds in the string, instead of allowing timestamps like "2012-10-25
> 01:41". The ISO8601 format does not require that the seconds be
> included, and this is confusing for users many users. It does not
> appear to me to be hard to make systems that accept time stamps in
> both forms, and it is different from the ISO8601 standard.
>
> So I am curious: why is this confusing requirement in place?
>
> --Mike Cooper
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> The demand for IT networking professionals continues to grow, and the
> demand for specialized networking skills is growing even more rapidly.
> Take a complimentary Learning@Cisco Self-Assessment and learn
> about Cisco certifications, training, and career opportunities.
> http://p.sf.net/sfu/cisco-dev2dev
> _______________________________________________
> Yaml-core mailing list
> [email protected]
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/yaml-core
>

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The demand for IT networking professionals continues to grow, and the
demand for specialized networking skills is growing even more rapidly.
Take a complimentary Learning@Cisco Self-Assessment and learn 
about Cisco certifications, training, and career opportunities. 
http://p.sf.net/sfu/cisco-dev2dev

_______________________________________________
Yaml-core mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/yaml-core