Package: coreutils
Version: 5.94-1
Severity: normal
An attempt to learn how the '-d' switch is used:
% touch --help | grep -n "\-d"
7: -d, --date=STRING parse STRING and use it instead of current time
18:Note that the -d and -t options accept different time-date formats.
So, is STRING defined in the man page?
% man touch | grep -C 1 -n "\-d\|STRING"
22-
23: -d, --date=STRING
24: parse STRING and use it instead of current time
25-
--
44-
45: Note that the -d and -t options accept different time-date
formats.
46-
No. The man page suggests checking the 'info' page, but that's
the same text as the man page, down to the doubly needless
suggestion that the user check the 'info' page he's already
reading.
It would be better if the man page explained what the format
of STRING was, maybe with a good example or two.
Note for other BTS readers, should this bug take a while to fix.
P. Eggert says here:
"'touch' is interpreting that 'T' as per RFC 2822, which says 'T'
is the time zone 7 hours from UTC."
#286201 touch -d sets a wrong time (7 hours offset in UTC)
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=286201
...which suggests that the STRING format can be read about like so:
% zless /usr/share/doc/RFC/links/rfc2822.txt.gz
Page 13 of that (Section 3.3 "Date and Time Specification") has some
stuff, but it's not obvious how it applies to '-d STRING'.
Hope this helps...
-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
APT prefers unstable
APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.16-1-686
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C (charmap=ANSI_X3.4-1968) (ignored: LC_ALL set to C)
Versions of packages coreutils depends on:
ii libacl1 2.2.36-1 Access control list shared library
ii libc6 2.3.6-6 GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii libselinux1 1.30-1 SELinux shared libraries
coreutils recommends no packages.
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