1467: Email

2014-12-31T13:46:47Z

Cjpetrie: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1467
| date = December 31, 2014
| title = Email
| image = email.png
| titletext = My New Year's resolution for 2014-54-12/30/14 Dec:12:1420001642 is to learn these stupid time formatting strings.
}}

==Explanation==
[[Beret Guy]] doesn't seem to know what an email is, even though the term has existed since before 1982 when SMTP was established and has been in use by the general public since 1998 when free email providers appeared and he even apparently personally maintains a web-page upon which he placed his(/an) email address. [[Megan]] is visibly appalled and wonders how else he expects electronic messages to be sent. She says that you have to check your e-mail as it is not like {{w|voicemail}} - thus saying that it is OK not to check voicemail.

Beret guy offers two alternatives: fax and {{w|Snapchat}}. When Megan tries to point out that Snapchat is mostly used to send naked pictures, Beret guy takes her to mean that fax is mostly used to send naked pictures. He terms this use of faxes faxting, a made-up word by analogy with {{w|sexting}}.

The title text shows what is possibly [[Randall|Randall's]] new years resolution: to learn how to use time formatting functions. When programming, it is often useful to obtain the current time by means of a time function. However, these time functions often provide more detail than what the programmer needs, such as time zone and milliseconds. Time formatting functions allow the output of the time function to be converted into what the programmer needs.

Randall appears to have used a time function to get the current date, probably with the formatting string "%Y-%M-%D %h:%m:%s", which looks like it should give year-month-day hour:minute:second, but when parsed by standard {{w|Unix}} routines gets interpreted as follows:

%Y is 4-digit year
%M is minute
%D is the same as %m/%d/%y, i.e. month/day/(2-digit)year
%h is the abbreviated month name
%m is 2-digit month
%s is the Unix timestamp

The {{w|Unix time|Unix timestamp}} 1420001642 that comes from the %s can be seen at the end of the date in the title text. This corresponds to the date 2014-12-31 at 04:54:02 UTC. This will hence give the full time string 2014-54-12/31/14 Dec:12:1420001642 from the above string.

The correct formatting string for year-month-day hour:minute:second would be %Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S which would have given the wanted output: 2014-12-31 04:54:02.

The trouble with using the correct date format has been mentioned in [[1179: ISO 8601]] and the correct date format was used in [[1340: Unique Date]].

==Transcript==
:[Megan approaches Beret Guy.]
:Megan: Any New Year's resolutions?
:Beret Guy: Gonna figure out what email is.
:Megan: ''...Email?''

:[Megan points to her phone.]
:Beret Guy: People always say they're sending them. They sound really into it, so I always nod, but I have no idea what it is.
:Megan: You have an address on your website!

:[Megan and Beret Guy walking.]
:Beret Guy: Oh, ''that's'' what that thing is.
:Megan: Email is important! You can't just ''never'' check it. It's not like voicemail.

:Beret Guy: Can't they just send messages ''normally?''
:Megan: How?
:Beret Guy: Fax! Or Snapchat.
:Megan: ...The naked pic thing?
:Beret Guy: Fax machines aren't ''just'' for faxting!
{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Beret Guy]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]

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1467: Email