Description of Format
Contents
Dates must have at least three elements:
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A day number (eg. 1, 2, 3, ..., 31) |
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A month name, abbreviation or number (eg. Jan, Feb, Mar, ..., Dec, or 1, 2, 3, ..., 12) |
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A year number (eg. 57, 1957, 2005, -6) |
The year must always be placed last, but the day and month parts may be entered in either order provided that the month is entered as a name or abbreviation eg. entering 7 Feb 95 or Feb 7 95 are both acceptable.
However, if the month is entered as a number, then the day and month must be entered in the same order as the display order ie. if the display style is "DD/MM/YY" then day must be entered before month, or if the style is "MM/DD/YY" then month must be entered before day).
Day number must be a valid day of the month for the entered month and year.
Month number must be 1 to 12, or month abbreviation must be at least the first 3 characters of the month's full name eg. Jan or Januar may be entered for January, and Jul or July may be entered for July.
If the year number has 2 or less digits, then it is assumed to be in the range of the current year – 92 to current year + 2 (eg. in 2002, the range is 1910 to 2009). To enter dates in the 1st century, use 00 as a prefix (eg. 0059 for year 59).
Separators between the elements within the date may be any of the following:
blank( ); slash(/); period(.); colon(:); semi-colon(;) or comma(,)
Optionally there may also be any of the following items:
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A day number suffix (ie. "st", "nd", "rd" or "th") |
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An epoch indicator (ie. AD, A.D., BC, B.C., CE, C.E., BCE, B.C.E.) |
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A calendar style indicator (ie. OS, O.S., NS, N.S.) |
The epoch is assumed to be AD unless BC or BCE has been entered, or if the year is negative. If the year is negative, then Solar Maps will automatically convert the year into a BC year, and remove the minus sign. (Note that there is a difference of 1 year between BC years and negative (astronomical) years eg. the year -6 is converted into 7 BC. This is due to the absence of a year 0 in the BC format.)