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RE: [Bug-gnulib] getdate.y question
From: |
Conrad T. Pino |
Subject: |
RE: [Bug-gnulib] getdate.y question |
Date: |
Wed, 12 May 2004 11:17:48 -0700 |
Hi Derek,
I saw Paul Eggert is already working on a resolution.
> From: Derek Robert Price
>
> >Where should I look to find out what the issue is?
>
> http://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-cvs/2004-04/msg00333.html
>
> Basically, getdate() used to reject invalid dates & times like, "Jan.
> 40th, 2004". To fix a bug & reuse code, the GNULIB team decided to
> have getdate.y use the mktime() function to convert a broken down time
> structure back into a time_t/seconds since the epoch. Unfortunately,
> mktime converts overflow in certain fields to valid dates and maybe
> times, in the case of this example, it will yield Feb. 9th.
>
> I'm not sure whether the correct fix would be some sort of overflow
> checking in getdate.y (though I worry that this solution would end up
> duplicating much of the same code from mktime() that we wish to avoid
> duplicating), or the implementation of some sort of "overflow
> converted" return value from mktime(), or perhaps even a new argument
> to mktime() to force strict overflow checks (more likely a new
> mktime_strict() function which could wrap and share an internal
> function with mktime(), to prevent changing the mktime() interface),
Well stated and very helpful. It's a library code policy issue rather
than solely technical.
> Cheers,
Thank you,
> Derek
Conrad