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Subject:Re: Days of the year From:Sean Fitzpatrick <Sean -dot- Fitzpatrick -at- SMED -dot- COM> Date:Mon, 24 Nov 1997 18:02:20 -0500
>Example: Let's say today is January 13, 1997. The Julian date would be
>013. Remove directories older than the 350th day of last year (173-348)
>Is there official terminology for this style of dating?
At least as a format in DP, Julian is the correct term Julian dates are in the
form yyddd, where the ddd field is right-aligned and padded with zeroes (IBM
Dict. of Comp.) I don't know why you can't drop the year field if it isn't
relevant.
>The programmer insists on calling it a Julian date, but the way I
>understand Julian, it is numbered where 1 is, I believe, somewhere in
>the 15th century?
You may be thinking of the Julian calendar, which was superseded by the
Gregorian calendar. The later was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582, but
not immediately adopted everywhere. I do have a vague recollection of a dating
system that is an absolute count of days since some arbitrary day (22 April
4004 B.C?), of which the DP term is a loose extension. I think it is used
mostly in astronomy.
Sean Fitzpatrick
Shared Medical Systems, Malvern, PA
sean -dot- fitzpatrick -at- smed -dot- com
Exhale, but don't hold your breath waiting for a tree to thank you.