Date: 1998jan12 Keywords: sane, sanity Q. What's the most sensible way to display (or save) the date and time? A. A lot of programs read and write files that contain the date and time. I can not think of a better way to represent the date than the standard way:

YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS

The link below describes the International Standard Organization's (ISO 8601) standard. My programs use this format wherever possible. More info http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-time.html --- Another nice way is:

YYYYMMMDD

eg:

1998jan12

This isn't immediately sortable but it is readable but all English speakers. There is no ambiguity on any fields. Of course, its no good for people who don't read English. --- In Java 8 or later:

String time = Instant.now().toString(); // Gives ISO-8601 time