Re: date -d20060229 gives: "invalid date"

[Steve Cousins]

Paul Eggert wrote:
> Steve Cousins <address@hidden> writes:
>
>
> > Don't I love new "features" like this?!  What is the purpose of this?
>
>
> Don't you just love date string parsing?  It's a subtle area, full of
> surprises.

Hi Paul,

Yeah.  I thought I had it worked out years ago. Or at least the small 
part that I've needed.  You're just trying to add some variety to my 
life I see.


> > How is it more useful to report an error rather than doing a
> > meaningful conversion?
>
>
> Because there's no such thing as a "meaningful conversion" that makes
> everyone happy if you have an invalid date.  Invalid dates are
> inherently ambiguous.  Is "Feb 29, 2006" actually Feb 28 or Mar 1?  Is
> 02:30 on April 2, 2006 actually 03:30 or 01:30?  You can come up with
> good arguments either way.  We warn users about the ambiguities by
> saying "no, you must write something like '2004-02-29 +2 years' if you
> want to add two years to a date".  This avoids the ambiguity for "Feb
> 29, 2006".


Why can't everything be done _my_ way? ;^)


> > Is this a bug or a feature?
>
>
> When it comes to parsing long digit strings, everything is a bug.  (:-)
>
> Use the hyphens; they are your friends.


Except for when all of your scripts (for the last six years) use 
YYYYMMDD format. :~o  I'll just use the old and faithful 5.2.1.

Thanks,

Steve
--
______________________________________________________________________
 Steve Cousins, Ocean Modeling Group    Email: address@hidden
 Marine Sciences, 452 Aubert Hall       http://rocky.umeoce.maine.edu
 Univ. of Maine, Orono, ME 04469        Phone: (207) 581-4302