Re: Decimal time support in 'date'

[za3k]

On 2019-12-17 08:26, Michael Stone wrote:
> Honestly, this sounds like something that, if implemented in
> coreutils, will leave people years in the future wondering why it was
> ever done and trying to figure out how to to paper over some
> compatibility issue that it has caused. It would help if the proposal
> came with more specific examples, comparisons to other formats showing
> its advantages, references to standards that it follows, etc.

There really are no modern-quality standards, which is an argument 
against. And as a future person of the past myself on occasion, this 
complaint makes sense--it can be easier to add stuff than remove it from 
utilities.

ISO 8601-1 allows decimal hours, minutes, and seconds (in timestamps), 
but not days. However, I sort of suspect (hope) support for decimal 
hours and minutes will be dropped in another revision.

OK, this is not enough clarity or demand. I think I will maintain a 
patchset on this one instead of trying to get it merged. Thanks for the 
input, folks. If a few years from now someone who does scientific work 
or timekeeping wants this and knows there to be a standard in common 
use, please feel free to revisit.