19881219

19881219 is a numeric string commonly used to denote the date December 19, 1988, in the YYYYMMDD format. This eight-digit form places the year first, followed by the month and day, producing a compact, sortable representation of a calendar date.

In practical use, 19881219 appears in data storage, file naming, archival catalogs, databases, and log entries where separators are undesirable or where lexicographic ordering by date is needed. Because the digits are arranged from most significant to least significant (year to day), strings like 19881219 sort chronologically when compared as plain text.

Relation to standard date formats: The same moment is often written as 1988-12-19 in ISO 8601, which uses hyphens to separate year, month, and day. The compact 19881219 form is a derivative used in systems that require compact identifiers or separator-free strings, though its meaning is still a date when interpreted in context.

Limitations and ambiguity: Without accompanying metadata, 19881219 may be misinterpreted in some contexts as a serial number or code rather than a date. Different organizations may reuse the same numeric string for non-date identifiers, so interpretation depends on the surrounding system or documentation.

See also: ISO 8601, YYYYMMDD, date formats.