It is funny how I sort of got sucked into this topic of time stamps.
In past I have always used the date$ function to time stamp my files unless I needed something down to the hour minute or second, I was doing date$ and time$ stamps with conversations with ELIZA or the Player code that came after ELIZA generalizing on lessons ELIZA code taught, maybe an _ between date and time, maybe just a space, ha! maybe I should use signature + Date$ + "+" + Time$ hmm...
Then Steve comes along and teaches us about Unix Epoch time stamps, a universal standard, cool!
But with the Y2K fiasco, I get to thinking "universal standard" that restricts start to 1970? hmm...
I suppose the Unix Epoch standard does shave the number down to single 64 bitter (or is it 4 bytes? 8 bytes my guess), my point is only a freak'n computer can read the thing!
I say, for a truly Universal TimeStamp, that maybe a human should be able to read it and understand it nearly as quick as a computer, at least be able to tell on sight whether one date is earlier or later than another and grossly approximate how much in human terms of years, months, days, hours, minutes, seconds.
To be globally correct we might have to include Time Zone and DST for comparing times and dates with other folks around the world.
This in my opinion is what the spirit of Basic is about bringing the power of lofty abstract reasoning down to the level of general human understanding and practical use.
I dunno, do you want a timestamp only a computer and the right program can read, or do you want one anyone can read and understand?
BTW I want one I can sort, so I start with year the most important gross detail (except maybe Time zone) and end with finest detail of second.
