On 10/05/2010 06:00 PM, Paul Eggert wrote:
On 10/05/10 14:00, Eric Blake wrote:
Is that the correct historical name, or should this be worded:
@code{parse_datetime} started life as @code{getdate}, as originally
implemented...
Perhaps that would be better. I don't know what its name was
originally, though; somebody would have to check.
Per coreutils' ChangeLog:
+Sun May 19 18:42:09 1991 David J. MacKenzie (djm at
churchy.gnu.ai.mit.edu)
+
+ * touch.c: Renamed getdate to get_date to avoid SVR4 conflict.
Should we also mention the non-thread-safe getdate() POSIX function, and
mention how the two differ?
A brief mention of that would be OK, too. Wouldn't spend a lot
of time on it.
It's implicitly mentioned by explaining the getdate->get_date rename :)
I've checked in this:
diff --git i/ChangeLog w/ChangeLog
index 7257a90..f3ca2ca 100644
--- i/ChangeLog
+++ w/ChangeLog
@@ -1,5 +1,9 @@
2010-10-07 Eric Blake <ebl...@redhat.com>
+ docs: update parse-datetime history
+ * doc/parse-datetime.texi (Authors of parse_datetime): Better
+ documentation of this function's history and alternatives.
+
cygwin: use more robust version check
* m4/memmem.m4 (gl_FUNC_MEMMEM_SIMPLE, gl_FUNC_MEMMEM): Don't
exclude an eventual cygwin 1.9.1.
diff --git i/doc/parse-datetime.texi w/doc/parse-datetime.texi
index b0a8340..8218d9f 100644
--- i/doc/parse-datetime.texi
+++ w/doc/parse-datetime.texi
@@ -543,15 +543,19 @@ Authors of parse_datetime
@cindex MacKenzie, David
@cindex Meyering, Jim
@cindex Eggert, Paul
-...@code{parse_datetime} was originally implemented by Steven M. Bellovin
+...@code{parse_datetime} started life as @code{getdate}, as originally
+implemented by Steven M. Bellovin
(@email{smb@@research.att.com}) while at the University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill. The code was later tweaked by a couple of people on
Usenet, then completely overhauled by Rich $alz (@email{rsalz@@bbn.com})
and Jim Berets (@email{jberets@@bbn.com}) in August, 1990. Various
revisions for the @sc{gnu} system were made by David MacKenzie, Jim
Meyering,
-Paul Eggert and others, including renaming it to @code{get_date} and
-then to @code{parse_datetime}
-to avoid confusion with the Posix function @code{getdate}.
+Paul Eggert and others, including renaming it to @code{get_date} to
+avoid a conflict with the alternative Posix function @code{getdate},
+and a later rename to @code{parse_datetime}. The Posix function
+...@code{getdate} can parse more locale-specific dates using
+...@code{strptime}, but relies on an environment variable and external
+file, and lacks the thread-safety of @code{parse_datetime}.
@cindex Pinard, F.
@cindex Berry, K.
--
Eric Blake ebl...@redhat.com +1-801-349-2682
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org
