Motivation

The motivation for creating the udate format arises from limitations encountered in tools such as jq, which struggles with keys containing dashes or numeric strings starting a key. By using underscores as delimiters and prefixing with udate_:

1. Tool Compatibility:
   Many JSON-based tools, including jq, handle underscores better than dashes and have issues with numeric keys. By using the udate_ prefix, the format becomes a convenient way to avoid these pitfalls when parsing or processing JSON with dates as keys.

2. Preprocessing Flexibility:
   The format can be easily preprocessed to convert the underscores into ISO 8601-compliant dashes, allowing for full compatibility with existing standards and systems that expect ISO 8601 dates.

3. Clarity:
   Using a clear prefix like udate_ ensures that it is recognizable as a special format. This helps avoid confusion or misinterpretation when working in multi-step data workflows that include intermediate non-ISO date encodings.

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Backlinks

• 'udate' date format (underscore date)