Subject: Re: bug#39693: Any chance of fixing --rfc-3339 to conform to the standard?

From: Paul Eggert <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2020 08:16:43 -0800

On 2/20/20 4:39 AM, Mads Bondo Dydensborg wrote:
> As have been established in 2006 and again in 2010, the rfc-3339 mandates the use of "T" in a single field timestamp.

No, RFC 3339 explicitly allows the use of space. It says:

       NOTE: ISO 8601 defines date and time separated by "T".
       Applications using this syntax may choose, for the sake of
       readability, to specify a full-date and full-time separated by
       (say) a space character.

This paragraph was put into the RFC at my suggestion, precisely so that GNU 
"date" output wouldn't have to contain that "T".

Tf you want GNU 'date' to output the 'T', you can use 'date --iso-8601=s' 
instead of 'date --rfc-3339=s'. That's the point of having these two options for 
GNU 'date'. If it weren't for this difference in behavior, GNU 'date' wouldn't 
have needed a --rfc-3339 option in the first place, and we shouldn't change the 
meaning of --rfc-3339 to eviscerate the whole point of the option.