Parsing ISO date/time strings - where did the parser go?

[Chris Angelico]

On Tue, Sep 11, 2012 at 7:46 AM, Rhodri James
<rhodri at wildebst.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> On Sun, 09 Sep 2012 13:14:30 +0100, Roy Smith <roy at panix.com> wrote:
>
>> In article <mailman.323.1346961101.27098.python-list at python.org>,
>>  Thomas Jollans <t at jollybox.de> wrote:
>>
>>> The ISO date/time format is dead simple and well-defined.
>
>
>> Well defined, perhaps.  But nobody who has read the standard could call
>> it "dead simple".  ISO-8601-2004(E) is 40 pages long.
>
>
> A short standard, then :-)

What is it that takes up forty pages? RFC 2822 describes a date/time
stamp in about two pages. In fact, the whole RFC describes the
Internet Message Format in not much more than 40 pages. Is
ISO-language just bloated?

*boggle*

ChrisA