Subject: Re: bug#12318: gnu date has incorrect date when using date math during a leap year

From: SciFi <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2012 22:06:50 +0000 (UTC)

Hi again,

Thank you for discussing this.

On further thought…

It seems that the "day" again is being "inserted" into this
situation, "ruining" the "proper answer".

I can see the automatic assumption of assigning "Day=Today" in
the present logic.  Again I would suggest a new option such as
- --no-assumptions or --pedantic to tell it *not* to make [such]
assumptions when that "piece" is not part of the "picture".

Let me explain:

The o.p. (Mr Mizell) shows several lines with only the month
and year to be presented.  No "day" at all.  The "A.I."
implied would be rather simple: it's begging to say "I don't
care about the Day, just deal with the Month [and Year] in
this equation."

By having just-this-much logic in GNU-date could perhaps
alleviate many of these type problems without breaking so-many
historical things while simultaneously providing "correct"
answers [hopefully finally].  Still without having to use the
Day-15 trick of course.  ;)

(…yeah, I still wouldn't know how to code this, alas…)

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