-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 According to stefano.sabatini-lala on 4/26/2006 10:25 AM: > date doesn't work as expexcted after reading the man page. > > In order to set the date you need to do: > $ date <date in some weird format> > > The command: > $ date --set=<date in some weird format> > doesn't appear to work.
Thanks for the report. Actually, date without arguments is the only use of the weird format. When you use the --set option, you get the same date parsing used by the --date option, which has an entire chapter devoted to the various constructs parsed in the info manual (see 'info coreutils date'). Unfortunately, the non-option format is so weird that --date (and thus --set) do not reliably parse it; it looks too ambiguous and lacks context to make it obvious what underlying format was intended. > > For example look at this session: > [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ LANGUAGE=en_US sudo date 0426172006 > Qua Abr 26 17:20:00 WEST 2006 > [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ LANGUAGE=en_US sudo date --set=0426172006 > date: invalid date `0426172006' > [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ LANGUAGE=en_US sudo date --set="0426172006" > date: invalid date `0426172006' > > The first command syntax (the only that actually work) isn't > documented in the man page. Actually it is. The date man page is auto-generated from 'date --help' output, and as of the latest stable release of coreutils, 5.94, both contain the synopsis of "date [-u|--utc|--universal] [MMDDhhmm[[CC]YY][.ss]]" Try instead doing: LANGUAGE=en_US sudo date --set='Qua Abr 26 17:20:00 WEST 2006' If you then have a problem, then you have uncovered a bug in date; we desire that we can unambiguously parse any output that date produces when no format string was supplied. > It's quite puzzling! If you have any suggestions how the documentation could be made clearer, or think you can patch the date parser to accept the weird format of date as a valid argument to --date/--set, we would love to hear your ideas. - -- Life is short - so eat dessert first! Eric Blake [EMAIL PROTECTED] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.1 (Cygwin) Comment: Public key at home.comcast.net/~ericblake/eblake.gpg Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFEU+Tj84KuGfSFAYARAqIeAJwMVeuBLNlW5559k5X1F2I5W9Tf2gCfTkQT p1OgH9szfidM+06fyfe6dVY= =Yrfi -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ Bug-coreutils mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-coreutils
