GNU bug report logs - #25560
Alphabetic Character Following date -d

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From: help-debbugs <at> gnu.org (GNU bug Tracking System)
To: Paul Eggert <eggert <at> cs.ucla.edu>
Cc: tracker <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#25560: closed (Alphabetic Character Following date -d)
Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2017 10:37:02 +0000

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Your message dated Sat, 28 Jan 2017 02:35:59 -0800
with message-id <4712b2cb-309c-bb0b-2d69-d73c758a2f0a <at> cs.ucla.edu>
and subject line Re: bug#25560: Alphabetic Character Following date -d
has caused the debbugs.gnu.org bug report #25560,
regarding Alphabetic Character Following date -d
to be marked as done.

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From: Owen Leibman <eclipsechasers2 <at> yahoo.com>
To: "bug-coreutils <at> gnu.org" <bug-coreutils <at> gnu.org>
Subject: Alphabetic Character Following date -d
Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2017 06:15:58 +0000 (UTC)

Testing a script to see how it handled invalid data, I had it execute the command:
date -d "x023-04-05 01:00"
Somewhat surprisingly, this was not treated as an error. The response was:
Tue Apr  4 06:07:02 LMT 0023

This happened on a Ubuntu system using coreutils-8.25.
However, I was not able to duplicate it on a Cygwin system using coreutils 8.26,
Where the date was flagged as invalid.
So, at a guess, this was a bug that was fixed in 8.26.

But, not so fast - the following commands give identical surprising results with both versions
(for convenience, I set my time zone to UTC before issuing these commands):

date -d a
Sat, Jan 28, 2017  1:00:00 AM

I searched the man and info pages in vain for how the command might be interpreting "a" here.
If there is some place where this is documented and I just missed it, please let me know.
In the meantime, I'll continue.

I tried other letters - "b" through "i" each advanced the displayed time by 1 hour (so "i" was 9:00).
Upper- and lower-case were treated the same.

At "j", I had a surprise:

date -d j
date: invalid date ‘j’

But then I was equally surprised by "k":

date -d k
Sat, Jan 28, 2017 10:00:00 AM

It seems to have picked up where the sequence was broken.
Continuing, "l" advanced to 11:00, and "m" to 12:00 (PM - presumably noon).
Another surprise came with "n":

date -d n
Fri, Jan 27, 2017 11:00:00 PM

From that point, the result marches backwards by an hour each time until "x" reaches 1:00 p.m.
Then "y" matches the output for "m". And "z":

date -d z
Sat, Jan 28, 2017 12:00:00 AM

And, having run out of letters, my test was complete.

Is the date command behaving as it should for all these examples?

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From: Paul Eggert <eggert <at> cs.ucla.edu>
To: Owen Leibman <eclipsechasers2 <at> yahoo.com>, 25560-done <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#25560: Alphabetic Character Following date -d
Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2017 02:35:59 -0800

Owen Leibman wrote:
> Is the date command behaving as it should for all these examples?

Those letters are military time zone abbreviations, so yes.

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