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Comment by kevinventullo | Hacker News Reader

I prefer YYYY-MM-DD format because alphabetical order corresponds to chronological order.

i invented my own which i find easier or at least more useful to read, and a requirement is it does sort properly: YYYYMMmonDD

today is 202309sep21

because i use it for filenames, i don't put in extra punctuation, there are enough cues in the format as is. To really see it, imagine scanning a list of files with different dates

it will still collate properly mixed with languages other than english

Maybe I'm not understanding something, but it seems like it would not collate properly with mixed languages:

  202304abr22 - My Spanish appointment
  202304apr15 - My English appointment
  202304avr07 - My French appointment

If you placed the month at the end, it would:

  20230407avr - My French appointment
  20230415apr - My English appointment
  20230422abr - My Spanish appointment

oh, you make a good point. I'm generally using it for monthly bank statements and whatnot so I'm not looking for fine grained collation, just grouping of "like with like", and i have some international accounts

I like that, and if day of week is relevant:

    20230915sepFRI

Or for a legibility/size tradeoff:

    2023.09.15.sep.fri

All that left is adding the Chinese zodiac year!

    2023.09.05.rab.sep.fri

Now I am just slightly bothered that the abbreviated words don’t form an isomorphic representation to the numeric. :(

    2023.09.05.3watrab.sep.3fri

There! 3rd Friday in September, 3rd Water Hare from the first in 1903! :)

(In the US we could name years in the form: 4th year of Roosevelt, etc.)

It’s also consistent with ordering numbers from highest base to lowest:

    1023 (1000, 100, 10, 1)

    123.456 (100, …, 0.001)

I also like YYYY-MM-DD

To save screen space I often use decimals in file names:

    2023.05.23 Design Summary

Yeah, and that's great for storing things in databases. Not for everyday communication. We talk in terms of most relevant to least relevant - the day (or time) is typically most relevant, with the year being least.

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