a bug in "touch"?

[Steve Magee]

I'm running RH v9 and using the touch command
to keep the same date and time on files after a sort.
My method used is:

touch -d "$mon $day $yrtime" filename

Every year in January, I find that I have many
files that have a date in the future.  Today I
ran a test on the touch command and found out,
the touch command has a problem/bug.

When issuing the command above and in the
format above, it sets the timestamp a year ahead.

Example: In January, you issue the command above
where $mon = Dec, $day = 31 and $yrtime = 12:30.
These parameter are taken from the ls -la | awk command.

The file...

-rwx------    1 major    daemon       2173 Dec 31 12:30 x

becomes...

-rwx------    1 major    daemon       2173 Dec 31  2004 x

I believe this is a bug in the touch command.

Thank you,
Steve Magee
Air Resources Board
State of California