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From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>
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Subject: Re: date(1)
In-Reply-To: <199708010240.DAA03883@awfulhak.org> from Brian Somers at "Aug 1, 97 03:40:05 am"
To: brian@awfulhak.org (Brian Somers)
Date: Fri, 1 Aug 1997 12:30:29 +0930 (CST)
Cc: grog@lemis.com, brian@awfulhak.org, hackers@freebsd.org
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Brian Somers writes:
>> .....]
>> > The first is just wrong, and the second is a mis-quote.  I originally
>> > said:
>> >
>> >> More like:
>> >>
>> >>>> cc[yy[mm[dd[hh]]]]]mm[.ss]]
>
> Arrrghhhhhh !  Your mailer is gobbling the "open square brace"
> characters !  That is *NOT* what I posted.  There are two opening
> brackets prior to the ``cc'' that something's eating.

Mea culpa.  OK, that changes things:

+ [[cc[yy[mm[dd[hh]]]]]mm[.ss]]
+
+ this syntax can be expanded to:
+ 
+ [[cc[yy[mm[dd]]]]mm[.ss]]
+ [[cc[yy[mm]]]mm[.ss]]
+ [[cc[yy]]mm[.ss]]
+ [[cc]mm[.ss]]
+ [mm[.ss]]
+ [[cc[yy[mm[dd]]]]mm]
+ [[cc[yy[mm]]]mm]
+ [[cc[yy]]mm]
+ [[cc]mm]
+ 
+ So 'date 2001' must mean "set the date to century 20, year undefined,
+ month, day, and hour undefined, minute 1.
+ 
+ Most newcomers to UNIX hate date(1) because the date entry format is
+ already too cryptic.  This would just make it worse.  There are some
+ other alternatives for date entry--tar uses one, for example, though
+ it may be GNU code.  Why not base an implementation on one of those?

In other words, yes, my mail macros screwed up the syntax, but they
didn't change much.

> I'm sure we can all agree that this means the above usage (with the
> two wandering brackets included) is correct ?

No, it's still wrong.

Greg