Proposal: Add a small warning label that appears in the Date&Time to String node under the Outut format field if the user inputs Y instead of y.
Category: Usability
Rationale:
This probably depends a lot on which programming language you’re most used to, but using YYYY for the week-based year can be pretty confusing and lead to errors that are really hard to spot.
In C, Python, and most SQL dialects, YYYY means the calendar year, so it’s perfectly reasonable for someone to type YYYY without realizing KNIME interprets it differently. Since KNIME does accept YYYY (just not in the way most users expect), it can quietly produce results that look fine but are actually wrong.
Given how rarely anyone truly needs the week-based year—and even the help file flat-out says “you probably want to use y instead”—it might make sense to add a small warning when someone inputs YYYY. The few people who genuinely need YYYY will know what they’re doing and can ignore it, while everyone else gets a helpful heads-up before generating weird results like 2015-12-31 showing up as 2016-Q4.