Re: A structured format for dates?

Hi Poul-Henning,

Il giorno mar 23 ago 2022 alle ore 10:19 Poul-Henning Kamp
<phk@phk.freebsd.dk> ha scritto:
> > Just tried to get some more feedback on twitter on the topic
> > https://twitter.com/ioggstream/status/1561752931417952258
> > feel free to RT.

> Making timestamps human readable is pointless, because, statistically
> speaking, no humans ever read these headers in the raw.
While statistically speaking humans do not read headers nor contents,
not having a human readable format for dates will just lead people that
cares for readability to:

- either continue using HTTP-date;
- or using a generic ISO8601 string, e.g. "2020-02-02T10:10:10+01:00".

> The necessary handling of leap-second is complex and a layer-violation.

Syslog does not use them
https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5424.html#section-6.2.3

> And finally: it is much more expensive in terms of CPU power.

This makes the more computationally intensive HTTP-date
the only human readable option.

In general, I am not sure whether CPU power issues should be addressed at
a different level than field content (e.g. at messaging level) since it is
not possible to predict the spillovers of those micro-optimizations:
honestly I have no data on that. This is an interesting topic that
needs further (and proper) investigation though.

Thanks for your time and have a nice day,
R.

Received on Tuesday, 23 August 2022 09:34:45 UTC