Comments on: Comparing Dates in FileMaker

By: gessie

gessie — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 03:25:54 +0000

Weird!! - wot’s weird??
What’s weird about: the first day of the fifth month of 2008?? Nothing at all it’s logic is inherent in the progression from particular to general!
What IS weird is what the Americans like to foist upon the rest of us - Month (Four) Day (Twenty) Year (Two Thousand and Eight) - which just flip-flops around - but they still seem to think they live at the centre of the universe and everyone else is weird!
Personally, when it comes to sorting lists of dates properly, which I have to do all the time for film titles, I much prefer the Japanese system: Year; Month; Day - which progresses logically from the general to the particular. Then at least you get a properly sorted list according to date!
@Homan - Ah well, I can’t imagine Filemaker Inc. ever going for local customs - so I can forget them ever doing it using a properly logical system from the start!!
NaH Jesse - I like your post - just not your inbuilt prejudices. When were you first taught to think globally?
gessie

By: O Homan

O Homan — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 12:08:36 +0000

Actually, this is probably an issue where Filemaker (and many other programs as well) can improve a lot. The standard US date format for most software is a bit silly. After all, more than 95% of the world’s population lives outside the USA, including those in England (yes, they still use feet and inches, too). Here in the middle of Europe, my Filemaker still refuses to accept the local dd.mm.yyyy format for FIND commands but insists on using mm.dd.yyyy dates, even though the operating system has the correct locale defined. Why does Filemaker need to redefine the locale again, why can’t it take the OS locale?

By: Tom Fitch

Tom Fitch — Thu, 22 May 2008 19:30:10 +0000

This applies to time and timestamps as well. Recently I was getting some weird results trying to construct a TS using GetAsTimestamp() when I suddenly realized the easy/foolproof way: the Timestamp() function.