Re: date gives error on valid input

[Bob Proulx]

Carlos Carvalho wrote:
> % date -d 2008-10-19
> date: invalid date `2008-10-19'
> 
> This happens with 5.97 and 6.10 in Debian.

This works okay for me using Debian.

  $ date -R -d 2008-10-19
  Sun, 19 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0600

However reversing months and days causes it to be invalid for me.

  $ date -R -d 2008-19-10
  date: invalid date `2008-19-10'

What happens if you reverse months and days?  I suspect it will work.
I suspect a locale issue.

What locale are you using?  You can determine your current locale
information using the 'locale' command.

  locale

What timezone are you in?  You can have date print the timezone.

  $ date "+%Z %z"
  MST -0700

Try this to force a standard locale and timezone.

  TZ=UTC LC_ALL=C date -R -d 2008-10-19

Does it succeed for you?

Bob