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Re:RFC 3339 vs. ISO 8601 by cmclaren on Sunday October 24, 2021 @07:40AM (#28977001)
The spec permits more than 4 digits for 'year' by mutual agreement. This is called 'expanded representation'. There is no limit to the number of digits, but parties need to agree on how many additional digits will be used to avoid ambiguous representations.

Consider that +002021001 could represent:

a) "Oct 1, 202" as a calendar date (proleptic Gregorian), in 'basic' format (i.e. no "-" separator), 5 digits for year.

b) "Jan 1, 2021" as an ordinal date, 'basic' format (i.e. no "-" separator), 6 digits for year.

Re:RFC 3339 vs. ISO 8601 by amelius on Sunday October 24, 2021 @08:49AM (#28977415)
I wonder how useful more than 4 digits would be. Once our species has achieved interstellar travel, we'll probably use a completely different representation for time.
Re:RFC 3339 vs. ISO 8601 by ethbr0 on Sunday October 24, 2021 @10:49AM (#28978415)
> Once our species has achieved interstellar travel, we'll probably use a completely different representation for time.

All experience thus far suggests "No." We'll be using all of these formats, plus some new ones.

Re:RFC 3339 vs. ISO 8601 by TheCoelacanth on Sunday October 24, 2021 @01:26PM (#28980050)
What date formats from 8000 years ago are still in use?
Re:RFC 3339 vs. ISO 8601 by ethbr0 on Sunday October 24, 2021 @02:42PM (#28980755)
Solstice and equinox-relative seasons?
Re:RFC 3339 vs. ISO 8601 by pdw on Sunday October 24, 2021 @10:01AM (#28977970)
Some musea need more than 4 digits to describe their collection...
Re:RFC 3339 vs. ISO 8601 by amelius on Sunday October 24, 2021 @10:09AM (#28978046)
Yeah, but they also need a minus sign.
Re:RFC 3339 vs. ISO 8601 by cmclaren on Sunday October 24, 2021 @11:33AM (#28978854)
By default, ISO 8601-1:2019 does not permit negative years in date representations.

Expanded representation (i.e. five digits or more for the year) permits both positive and negative years (and the sign is mandatory for both positive and negative years).

ISO 8601-2:2019 has provisions for numeric extensions. Subclause 4.4.1.2 permits negative four-digit years (years -9999 to -0001).

Note that both of these options require mutual agreement.

Re:RFC 3339 vs. ISO 8601 by neoeno on Sunday October 24, 2021 @04:39PM (#28981678)
One use: I was teaching some developers COBOL, and I wanted to illustrate for them how the Y2K bug came about.

So I gave them a project to do parsing a file with contemporary dates in. Then towards the end I quietly supplied them with a similar file containing dates from the year 10000+.

Whether or not the devs of years past felt it similarly unlikely that their software would live to the year 2000 as we do the year 10000, I don’t know. But it was a fun exercise!

Re:RFC 3339 vs. ISO 8601 by heavenlyblue on Sunday October 24, 2021 @06:53PM (#28982688)
Don’t forget that when Y2K problems were being created the hardware was _way_ less performant than the hardware of today. There was a reason to be wary of how much memory you are using, now there isn’t much.
Re:RFC 3339 vs. ISO 8601 by Klaster_1 on Sunday October 24, 2021 @01:35PM (#28980139)