GNU bug report logs - #79261
coreutils 9.7 "date -u" - timezone offset is in the wrong direction

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Message #30 received at 79261 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Paul Eggert <eggert <at> cs.ucla.edu>
To: james <at> nurealm.net
Cc: 79261 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, Aurelien Jarno <aurelien <at> aurel32.net>
Subject: Re: bug#79261: coreutils 9.7 "date -u" - timezone offset is in the
 wrong direction
Date: Sun, 24 Aug 2025 16:17:12 -0700

On 2025-08-24 14:33, James Feeney via GNU coreutils Bug Reports wrote:
> reporting UTC in 12 hour format is just plain wrong.

No it's fine, actually. UTC is a world-wide standard; it's not local to 
Greenwich. Many people prefer 12-hour format, and there's nothing wrong 
with displaying UTC that way.

And even if I agreed with you, longstanding practice is to for "date -u" 
to respect the current locale, and POSIX requires this behavior. So 
there are good reasons for keeping the behavior the way it is.

To get the behavior you prefer, you can run "LC_ALL=C date -u", "date -u 
+'%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'", or similar commands.

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