Joe Barwell wrote on Thu, 22 May 2003 12:11:25 +1300:

>I keep waiting for someone else to chime in with the so-called
>"French vanilla" method... which I don't have readily available here.
><shrug>  Oh well, I imagine Richard Morton won't mind if I post his
>handy summary here: <http://www.macadillo.com/ATW/shortdate.html>,
>which includes a brief explanation/acknowledgement of its name.

"French Vanilla", by Emmanuel Lévy, is used (though regrettably not
acknowledged) in my recent offering to this thread. Originally:

  copy theDate to b
  set b's month to January
  set monthNum to 1 + (theDate - b + 1314864) div 2629728

There are two later optimisations of the last line. Richard Hartman's:

  set monthNum to 1 + (theDate - b) div 2500000

... and mine:

  set monthNum to (theDate - b + 3944592) div 2629728

French Vanilla is attributed to Emmanuel, but I'd like to know who coined
the name. I thought it was Richard Morton, but he thinks it was you, Joe.
Any comment?

NG