I'm sure this has been discussed, but I have been looking at my bank and store and utility receipts. Most have the dates written as xx-xx-99. Can they be compliant and still use this format on their receipts? If my utility says they are compliant but still bill me from 07-21-99 to 08-21-99, are they REALLY on top of it, or may the computer be ok and just display the date in that format on the printouts?

-- J.K.L. (jkl7@webtv.net), September 13, 1999

Answers

The system can be perfectly okay and just put the date in that format for printing. So next year they may say 01-21-00, but the system will know it's 2000. How the date is represented internally can be totally different to how it's displayed. For example, you can have hours of fun fiddling with your Windows regional settings, telling it to display 2 or 4 digit years, or dd-mm-yy or even yyyy-mm-dd (think that one's Hungarian), but it's still keeping the dates stored in some fixed format inside, and just reformatting it for display.

-- Glad to be of service (hop-hop@hoppity.hop), September 13, 1999.