>Hi Dragan,
>
>in Germany we usually use date format DD.MM.YY. However I really don't like this format from a programmers point of view. But this is the same for the american format , too. I'd prefer a format like YY.MM.DD by default. This would make much more sense for any kind of sorting timestamps, that i.e. for some reason can only be sorted alphanumerical.

I know, and generally feel the same about the dates stored for programmatic use. However, this was about human readable dates, where they should be in the shape dictated by the language and culture. For example, our traditional date format was dd-MMM-yyyy, where the MMM stood for the Roman numeral of the month. Today would be 13-III-2010. And then the computers came and we gradually adopted the German date format.

Speaking of date formats, the MIT announces their results (who will be accepted as their student in the fall and who not) today, at 13:59. Why? Well, today is the Pi day... so, 3.14159 - on three fourteen, at one fiftynine. Which is ridiculous at both the date level (the utterly unmathematical American date) and the hour level (the silly 12+12 hour day), but that's the American attitude towards the units of measure.

>This is i.e. what often happens with file names these days. We have to sort files with identical creation dates (down to seconds) that have a timestamp within their filename. But formatted like ddmmyyhhmmss there is no quick way for a sort. Formatted like yymmddhhmmss this could be done alphanumerical by design.

Whoever wrote the requirement, knew just enough about sorting to be dangerous... to your mental health.