GNU bug report logs - #76316
date: forgot the full day of the month name

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Message #5 received at submit <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Dan Jacobson <jidanni <at> jidanni.org>
To: bug-coreutils <at> gnu.org
Subject: date: forgot the full day of the month name
Date: Sun, 16 Feb 2025 10:21:00 +0800

$ man date|grep "locale's full"
       %A     locale's full weekday name (e.g., Sunday)
       %B     locale's full month name (e.g., January)
$ LC_ALL=zh_TW.UTF-8 date +%A%B
週日二月
OK that's great. But you forgot
              locale's full day of the month name
E.g., I'll add it on the back for 2/2
週日二月二日
The reason is due to English only having one form: 2, but other
languages might have two.

Message #8 received at 76316 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Paul Eggert <eggert <at> cs.ucla.edu>
To: Dan Jacobson <jidanni <at> jidanni.org>
Cc: 76316 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: date: forgot the full day of the month name
Date: Sat, 15 Feb 2025 22:14:13 -0800

> $ man date|grep "locale's full"
>        %A     locale's full weekday name (e.g., Sunday)
>        %B     locale's full month name (e.g., January)
> $ LC_ALL=zh_TW.UTF-8 date +%A%B
> 週日二月
> OK that's great. But you forgot
>               locale's full day of the month name
> E.g., I'll add it on the back for 2/2
> 週日二月二日
> The reason is due to English only having one form: 2, but other
> languages might have two.

Sorry, I don't understand the bug report. Are you asking for a new 
feature, or are you saying that currently GNU 'date' outputs incorrect 
strings for %A and/or %B? If the former, what new feature exactly? And 
if the latter, what is the correct output?

Message #11 received at 76316 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Dan Jacobson <jidanni <at> jidanni.org>
To: Paul Eggert <eggert <at> cs.ucla.edu>
Cc: 76316 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: date: forgot the full day of the month name
Date: Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:09:44 +0800

All I know is in Chinese the months and days are like
一月一日 (1/1)
二月二日 (2/2)
and date(1) will allow me to print
一月 but not 一日
二月 but not 二日
probably because date allows two versions for months
1 or January
2 or February
but not days, because in English none is needed.
But that's not the case for Chinese.

>>>>> "PE" == Paul Eggert <eggert <at> cs.ucla.edu> writes:
PE> Sorry, I don't understand the bug report. Are you asking for a new
PE> feature, or are you saying that currently GNU 'date' outputs incorrect
PE> strings for %A and/or %B? If the former, what new feature exactly? And

Yes the former.
But you need a linguistics expert to confirm what I'm saying.

PE> if the latter, what is the correct output?

Message #16 received at 76316 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Paul Eggert <eggert <at> cs.ucla.edu>
To: Dan Jacobson <jidanni <at> jidanni.org>
Cc: 76316 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: date: forgot the full day of the month name
Date: Sun, 16 Feb 2025 00:18:20 -0800

On 2025-02-16 00:09, Dan Jacobson wrote:
> PE> Sorry, I don't understand the bug report. Are you asking for a new
> PE> feature, or are you saying that currently GNU 'date' outputs incorrect
> PE> strings for %A and/or %B? If the former, what new feature exactly? And
> 
> Yes the former.

OK, marking this as a wishlist item then.

We have similar problems in English too. There's no date format that 
outputs "Sunday, the 16th of February", or "II.16" or a bunch of other 
English-language dates. I imagine there are similar problems in nearly 
every language that "date" claims to support.

Message #19 received at 76316 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Dan Jacobson <jidanni <at> jidanni.org>
To: Paul Eggert <eggert <at> cs.ucla.edu>
Cc: 76316 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: date: forgot the full day of the month name
Date: Sun, 16 Feb 2025 18:24:31 +0800

Indeed there is also "The twenty-second of July" format.

But for Chinese it's like the user can get
Seventh month,
but not seventh day,
all due to there being %A and %B, only down to the n

Anyway isn't it odd that there are only
     locale’s abbreviated weekday name (e.g., ‘Sun’)
     locale’s full weekday name, variable length (e.g., ‘Sunday’)
     locale’s abbreviated month name (e.g., ‘Jan’)
     locale’s full month name, variable length (e.g., ‘January’)
but no (1-31) day pairs?

>>>>> "PE" == Paul Eggert <eggert <at> cs.ucla.edu> writes:
PE> On 2025-02-16 00:09, Dan Jacobson wrote:
PE> Sorry, I don't understand the bug report. Are you asking for a new
PE> feature, or are you saying that currently GNU 'date' outputs incorrect
PE> strings for %A and/or %B? If the former, what new feature exactly? And
>> Yes the former.

PE> OK, marking this as a wishlist item then.

PE> We have similar problems in English too. There's no date format that
PE> outputs "Sunday, the 16th of February", or "II.16" or a bunch of other
PE> English-language dates. I imagine there are similar problems in nearly
PE> every language that "date" claims to support.

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