At their most basic, various software platforms display alphanumeric lists of files and folders in an ascending or descending fashion. Inconsistencies tend to fragment such lists, which may become unnavigable. For this reason, when working within a filesystem, it is advantageous to standardize the representation of calendar dates and times using an intuitive, compact (yet specific), alphanumeric shorthand. The truncated date standard may be most effective when used consistently, especially as a prefix, a suffix, or as a chronological version number. # TRUNCATED REPRESENTATION ## DATE - YYMMDDddd - YY • Two- or four-digit Year - MM • Two-digit Month - DD • Two-digit Day - ddd • Two- or three-digit Weekday - Including the weekday helps to disambiguate the preceding numbers (those which come before), lending context to other users. ## TIME - HHMM - HH • Two-digit Hour - MM • Two-digit Minute - The [24-hour clock](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24-hour_clock) is more specific and less fragmentary. - The 12-hour clock, if used, req's AM / PM disambiguation. ## EXAMPLES - 240601Thu - Represents: Thursday, June 1st, 2024. - 240601Thu1806 - Represents: 6:06PM, Thursday, June 1st, 2024. - 240601Thu1812 - Represents: 6:12PM, Thursday, June 1st, 2024. ## CHARACTERS - Note that the above examples use only alphanumeric characters (letters and numbers). - Omit special characters such as : (colons). Most filesystems may encounter errors when such characters are used to name a file or folder. # GENERAL PRINCIPLES The YYMMDD format is adapted from a [Truncated Representation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601#Truncated_representations) of the International Standard [ISO 8601](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601). > [!Quote] ISO 8601^[[WIKI](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601#General_principles) - ISO 8601 - General Principles] > - Date and time values are ordered from the largest to smallest unit of time: year, month (or week), day, hour, minute, second, and fraction of second. The lexicographical order of the representation thus corresponds to chronological order, except for date representations involving negative years or time offset. This allows dates to be naturally sorted by, for example, file systems. > - Each date and time value has a fixed number of digits that must be padded with leading zeros. > - Representations can be done in one of two formats – a basic format with a minimal number of separators or an extended format with separators added to enhance human readability... > - For reduced precision, any number of values may be dropped from any of the date and time representations, but in the order from the least to the most significant. For example, "2004-05" is a valid ISO 8601 date, which indicates May (the fifth month) 2004. This format will never represent the 5th day of an unspecified month in 2004, nor will it represent a time-span extending from 2004 into 2005. # REFERENCES - [WIKI - ISO 8601](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601) - [WIKI - ISO 8601 - Truncated Representations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601#Truncated_representations) - [WIKI - ISO 8601 - General Principles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601#General_principles) - [WIKI - 24-hour Clock](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24-hour_clock)