Editing Calendar date (section)

==Advantages for ordering in sequence==
One of the advantages of using the [[ISO 8601]] date format is that the [[lexicographical order]] ([[ASCIIbetical]]) of the representations is equivalent to the chronological order of the dates, assuming that all dates are in the same time zone. Thus dates can be sorted using simple string comparison algorithms, and indeed by any left to right [[collation]]. For example:

 2003-02-28 (28 February 2003) sorts before
 2006-03-01 (1 March 2006) which sorts before
 2015-01-30 (30 January 2015)

The YYYY-MM-DD layout is the only common format that can provide this.<ref name=W3CFAQ>{{cite web| url=http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-date-format | access-date=2008-10-21 | title=FAQ: Date formats | publisher=[[World Wide Web Consortium]] (W3C) }}</ref> Sorting other date representations involves some [[parsing]] of the date strings. This also works when a time in 24-hour format is included after the date, as long as all times are understood to be in the same time zone.

ISO 8601 is used widely where concise, human-readable yet easily computable and unambiguous dates are required, although many applications store dates internally as [[UNIX time]] and only convert to ISO 8601 for display. All modern computer [[Operating Systems]] retain date information of files outside of their titles, allowing the user to choose which format they prefer and have them sorted thus, irrespective of the files' names.