I know im not going to be popular for saying this but I think you should take a different tack. Tell you users that they have to use YYYY-MM-DD and be done with it. Even though I can hear the "boo hiss" I have a strong point here. The fact is that ISO dates are there for a reason. They are standard in Europe, they are specified in Duden in Germany (not to mention being a DIN standard as well), the US military uses them etc. Frankly its not unreasable to say that anybody sane uses ISO dates. Sure you may hear a bit of grumbling but after a week or two they wont even remember being able to enter dates in such a foolish format as DD/MM/YYYY. And actually I bet a whole bunch of them are quite used to using ISO formatted dates and wont even bat an eye.

What I would do is ignore the issue. Then if they asked I would say no. Then when they pleaded I would tell them to get a budget to write the code to handle the format and tell them itll be at minimum two weeks to sort out. Then they will go away. :-)

And before anybody rejoins with one of those "following orders" kinda reply, ask yourself this: if the user asks you to design the system so that some kind of horrible bug is possible, say one that would allow under some circumstance the DB to be wiped or the filesystem to be corrupted or something, just so they can have some "feature" of dubious worth would you do it? I know I wouldnt. My company hires me because Im (more or less :-) a professional. They hire me to give professional opinions, and to Do the Right Thing. They hire me (and you) because we have skills and knowledge they need, not to blindly follow orders. So when I say to them "No, i wont do that, its a bad idea for these reasons" I expect them to listen. If they choose to overrule me then I ask for it on paper. It is _very_ rare that a user/manager etc will overrule you when you insist on paperwork to show they will carry the can if something goes wrong. The very fact that you insist shows them that you are pretty much certain they will end up with egg on their face. And nobody likes that.

NOTE: as my be able to tell :-) I have strong feelings on this particular subject. IMO no computer program should either emit or accept any human readble date format other than an ISO compliant one. (Well, except under extreme duress.)


---
demerphq

<Elian> And I do take a kind of perverse pleasure in having an OO assembly language...

In reply to Re: Date conversion with Class::DBI by demerphq
in thread Date conversion with Class::DBI by bsb

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