{{Multiple issues, {{unreferenced, date=October 2012{{notability, date=October 2012 A GeneralizedTime is a time format in the ASN.1 notation. It consists of a string value representing the calendar date, as defined in

ISO 8601 ISO 8601 is an international standard covering the worldwide exchange and communication of date and time-related data. It is maintained by the Geneva-based International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and was first published in 1988, wi ...

, a time of day with an optional fractional seconds element and the optional local time differential factor as defined in ISO 8601. In contrast to the UTCe class of ASN.1 the uses a four-digit representation of the year to avoid possible ambiguity. Another difference is the possibility to encode time information of any wanted precision via the fractional seconds element. Examples from ITU-T X.680:

"19851106210627.3"
local time 6 minutes, 27.3 seconds after 9 pm on 6 November 1985.

"19851106210627.3Z"
coordinated universal time as above.

"19851106210627.3-0500"
local time as in the first example, with local time 5 hours retarded in relation to coordinated universal time.

ASN.1 also defines a time format widely used in

SNMP Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is an Internet Standard protocol for collecting and organizing information about managed devices on IP networks and for modifying that information to change device behaviour. Devices that typically ...

, that includes separator characters and does not pad the fields (e.g., "1985-11-6,21:6:27.3,-5:0").

See also