Package: coreutils Version: 6.10-3 Severity: normal [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ touch 20080412.gpx --date=2008-04-12T05:21:44Z touch: invalid date format `2008-04-12T05:21:44Z' [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ touch 20080412.gpx --date=2008-04-12T05:21:44 [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ ls -l 20080412.gpx -rw-rw-r-- 1 andrew andrew 232974 2008-04-12 10:21 20080412.gpx
There are two problems here, one of which is covered by: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?archive=no&bug=286201 The manpage for touch says: -d, --date=STRING parse STRING and use it instead of current time Since there is no mention of what format the STRING must be it seems to me very reasonable to assume that ISO date formats should be acceptable to it, at a minimum. The trailling Z on an ISO date indicates that the date has been canonicalised to UTC, and the 'T', of course, separates the date and time parts. It seems to me that this clearly violates the 'principal of least surprise'. Although I understand the importance of the need to remain backward- compatible with older methods of parsing dates we must be reaching a time where the likelihood of a string such as '2008-04-12T05:21:44' *not* being an ISO format date approaches zero. Regards, Andrew McMillan. -- System Information: Debian Release: lenny/sid APT prefers unstable APT policy: (990, 'unstable') Architecture: i386 (i686) Kernel: Linux 2.6.25-rc8-hippy (SMP w/2 CPU cores) Locale: LANG=en_NZ.UTF8, LC_CTYPE=POSIX (charmap=ANSI_X3.4-1968) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash Versions of packages coreutils depends on: ii libacl1 2.2.45-1 Access control list shared library ii libc6 2.7-9 GNU C Library: Shared libraries ii libselinux1 2.0.59-1 SELinux shared libraries coreutils recommends no packages. -- no debconf information -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
