Re: A creepy story about dates. How to prevent it?

From: Bruce Momjian <pgman(at)candle(dot)pha(dot)pa(dot)us>
To: "scott(dot)marlowe" <scott(dot)marlowe(at)ihs(dot)com>
Cc: Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us>, Peter Eisentraut <peter_e(at)gmx(dot)net>, Jean-Luc Lachance <jllachan(at)nsd(dot)ca>, Frank Miles <fpm(at)u(dot)washington(dot)edu>, Bruno Wolff III <bruno(at)wolff(dot)to>, Ron Johnson <ron(dot)l(dot)johnson(at)cox(dot)net>, pgsql-general(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Re: A creepy story about dates. How to prevent it?
Date: 2003-06-23 19:24:11
Message-ID: 200306231924.h5NJOBY28989@candle.pha.pa.us
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scott.marlowe wrote:
> On Mon, 23 Jun 2003, Tom Lane wrote:
>
> > "scott.marlowe" <scott(dot)marlowe(at)ihs(dot)com> writes:
> > > The one thing that should absolutely be turned off is day/month swapping
> > > on dates of the form: 2003-02-22.
> >
> > Agreed on that. YYYY-DD-MM isn't used in the real world AFAIK, and it's
> > reasonable to treat it as an error.
> >
> > > I've seen little actual defense of the current behaviour,
> >
> > Other than me, I think you mean. dd/mm/yyyy and mm/dd/yyyy are
> > inherently ambiguous in the real world, and when you can clearly
> > determine what the intended meaning is, I think it's more reasonable
> > to assume the datestyle isn't set correctly than to reject the data.
>
> I thought the locale set that kind of behaviour didn't it? If so, then
> it's better to fail loudly then quietly accept bad data. But if the
> locale doesn't define such a thing, or it can't be set in postgresql.conf,
> the it's best to just avoid that date style altogether.

Added to TODO, with question mark:

* Have initdb set DateStyle based on locale?

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