[Rd] ?strptime ambiguity (PR#7907)

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Mon, 30 May 2005 tobias.verbeke at telenet.be wrote:

> Full_Name: Tobias Verbeke
> Version: 2.1.0
> OS: GNU/Linux
> Submission from: (NULL) (81.247.252.229)
>
>
> Would it be possible to use a non-ambiguous example
> of expressing a day according to the ISO 8601 international
> standard in the first sentence of the Note section of
> ?strptime, e.g. "2001-04-18" instead of "2001-02-03" ?

What is ambiguous about that (deliberate) example?  The ISO 8601 standard 
is an international standard, and the meaning of "2001-02-03" is defined 
there.  There is even a reference to the standard on the help page, and 
the `default formats' are specified under `Arguments'.

The point was that people should not guess at the meaning, but follow up 
the pointers given.

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595