Dates and times

Rhyme uses two simple, consistent formats for dates and times — the same formats used across the internet and in most spreadsheets.

Date format

Rhyme dates follow the international standard: year-month-day, separated by hyphens.

2026-08-11

That’s yyyy-mm-dd — four digits for the year, two digits for the month, two digits for the day. Leading zeros are required: August is 08, not 8. September 3rd is 2026-09-03, not 2026-9-3.

Time format

Rhyme times use 24-hour format: hour:minute.

14:30

That’s hh:mm — two digits for the hour (00–23) and two digits for the minute (00–59). 2:30 PM is 14:30. Midnight is 00:00. Noon is 12:00.

Storing dates and times

Use a variable to save a date or time, just like any other value:

$start-date = "2026-08-11"
$meeting-time = "14:30"

Dates and times are stored as text in the yyyy-mm-dd and hh:mm formats. Write them in quotes when assigning them directly.

Displaying dates and times

To show a stored date on screen:

.text "Start date: $start-date"

This displays the date exactly as stored: 2026-08-11.

Common gotchas

Leading zeros are required. August must be 08, not 8. The 3rd of the month must be 03, not 3. A missing leading zero will cause dates to compare or sort incorrectly.

Time is always 24-hour. There’s no AM or PM in Rhyme’s time format. 9 AM is 09:00; 9 PM is 21:00. If users enter times in 12-hour format, convert before storing.

Dates sort correctly as text. Because the format puts the year first, sorting a list of dates alphabetically also sorts them chronologically — 2026-01-01 comes before 2026-12-31, just as you’d expect.