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Status Future consideration
Workspace z/OS
Categories DFSMS HSM
Created by Guest
Created on Apr 17, 2023

Have HSM display unambiguous dates.

I live in South Africa, support customers in the UK, running an American operating system.

HLIST of a migrated dataset displays both the migration date and the last reference date.

However, both these dates have the format xx/yy/zz, with no explanation as which is the day, month, year.

In my case, a dataset has a migration date of 09/07/02

In America, this would be interpreted as 7th September 2002

In the UK, it would be interpreted as meaning 9th July 2002

In South Africa, it would be interpreted as 2nd July 2009

Which of these 3 interpretations is the correct one ??

It would make it a little easier if the year were 4 digits.

But then you still have the difference between US (mm/dd) and the UK (dd/mm)

Why not use either the ISO standard of 2023-04-17 or the very unambiguous 17-Apr-2023

To cater for US preferences, you could even make it Apr-17-2023

P.S. I choose a dash instead of a slash because it makes the date easier to read instantaneously.

P.S. 2-digit years went out at least 23 years ago.

Idea priority Low