In a moment of whimsy I briefly considered a date format where digits were sorted alphabetically.

2026-07-02-16-31-52 -> -----00011222235667

Hopefully it will remain a nonsense and never be seen in the wild, unlike the phone number field which I found on a real website which responded to scroll events to increase and decrease the value it contained.

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card_zero 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Well that's just totally ambiguous. What you should do instead is treat the date as one long number and present its factors, for instance 2⁴⋅11⋅7649⋅15050023, much more practical.

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rich_sasha 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

How about just sort the numbers from biggest to smallest?

2026-07-02 16:45 becomes

2026-45-16-06-02

Bonus points for using a very confusing separator... Maybe {?

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debesyla 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Wait, can this format be transformed back to the "normal" format? If so, then it could be kinda viable for some operations... :thinking_emoji:

	▲	jstanley 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		No, it can't be transformed back because it has lost information. 2025-06 and 2026-05 both have the same digits, for example.
	▲	mkopinsky 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		No, it's an unreversible hash function. I use this for passwords - no one will ever be able to figure out what ehntru2 was originally.
	▲	ben_w 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		No, because "12".sort_by_digits() == "21".sort_by_digits()