On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 4:09 AM, Edward C. Zimmermann <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Its not terribly difficult to parse.
...
> In natural language this I think also makes sense. The expression
> 2001-12-06? means that one is less than certain on the day (06).
>
> Metsärantala suggeted
>> > 2011-05-09? (* "?" applies to the whole date *)
>
> But what does that mean?
> The expression is a date readable to day and as such if one has a lower
> level of precision one would have used a different form.
>
> More concretely the expressions
> 2011-05-09?
> 2011-05-(09)?
> 2011-(05-09)?
> (2011-05-09)?
> are, I suggest, saying more or less the same thing.
>
>
> 2001-12? Says something like (puting some wild semantics in for ?)
> "I think it was in Dec 2001"
> while 2001-12-06? says
> "I think it was the 6th of Dec 2001".
> In this light I would argue that
> 2001-(12-06)? and 2001-12-06? are homologous.
> The expression, by contrast, 2001?-12-06? says that
> "It was in Dec, I think perhaps the 6th and maybe 2001"
Yes, I get this, but my question is WHY? Why do we NEED this
complexity? Where are the use cases for being able to represent these
sorts of dates in machine-readable ways?
I guarantee you I won't be the only person asking these questions.
If they've already been satisfactorily answered, then fine. I just don't recall.
Bruce
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