-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 According to Aganan, Nicholas on 4/23/2008 9:22 AM: | | VERSION: 6.4
You might want to consider upgrading; the latest stable version is 6.11. | root @ surplus# date 033100002008 | | Mon Mar 31 00:00:00 EDT 2008 | | | | [/usr/local/bin] | | root @ surplus# /usr/local/bin/date -d 'last month' '+%b' | | Mar | <<<< BUG, should be Feb Rather than changing your system clock, you can combine dates to test this in one invocation: $ date -d 'Mar 28, 2008 last month' +%b Feb Your example is not a bug. 'last month' is documented to be equivalent to 'alter only the month field, then renormalize'. Starting from 'Mar 31' and altering the month field yields 'Feb 31', but since that is not a read date, the renormalization process settles on Mar 2 (this year, and Mar 3 on other years). There are at least three viable means of handling this ambiguity - error out if altering the month gives an ambiguous date, renormalizing, or truncating; obviously, the method you wanted was not the method that coreutils chose, but you can't call it a bug since it was ambiguous in the first place. No matter which way we pick, someone will complain that we picked wrong. The manual also suggests using unambiguous dates when trying to switch just months, as in "date -d 'Mar 15, 2008 last month' +%b". This is also an issue with ambiguous times that fall on daylight savings boundaries. | | The information transmitted is intended only for the person or entity It is considered bad netiquette to post to publicly archived mailing lists with such disclaimers, as they are unenforceable. Some people refuse to respond on principle. Consider using a different email account, such as a free web-based one, or a news gateway such as gmane, for posting to lists. - -- Don't work too hard, make some time for fun as well! Eric Blake [EMAIL PROTECTED] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (Cygwin) Comment: Public key at home.comcast.net/~ericblake/eblake.gpg Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iEYEARECAAYFAkgQBjMACgkQ84KuGfSFAYADlwCdEijUtnPO+NwoXtlkp9qBZhbg zVkAn0VQjH4Dz6l25bl9Mo2ecDIWNWZZ =AfF9 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ Bug-coreutils mailing list Bug-coreutils@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-coreutils