Re: PDT timezone bug in GNU coreutils "date" v6.9

[Philip Rowlands]

On Thu, 17 Jan 2008, Bob Proulx wrote:

> But the case under discussion was PDT not EST.
>
>  $ TZ=US/Pacific date -d"Tue Jan 14 08:25:26 PDT 2008"
>  date: invalid date `Tue Jan 14 08:25:26 PDT 2008'
>
> At this point I don't know if PDT is ambiguous or not

Not to getdate. There is one "PDT" entry in time_zone_table:
  { "PDT",      tDAYZONE, -HOUR ( 8) }, /* Pacific Daylight */

> Consulting the tables with 'zdump -v US/Eastern | grep 2008' shows 
> that indeed "Tue Jan 14 08:25:26 EDT 2008" is not a valid date in that 
> timezone.  It should be flagged with an error regardless of local 
> timezone setting.

Are we in the territory of documented error or opinion? Can you cite the 
docs which explain why "Tue Jan 14 08:25:26 EDT 2008" is not valid? I 
can't find any (otherwise I'd stop arguing :)), which is why I ask 
whether treating "EDT" as "-0400" is technically wrong or aesthetically 
wrong. getdate isn't confused, and with a non-conflicting TZ will handle 
the input unambiguously.


Cheers,
Phil