Date: Sun, 07 Aug 2016 02:31:30 +0200 From: Mark Martinec <Mark.Martinec+freebsd@ijs.si> To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: date(1) default format changed between 10.3 and 11.0-BETA3 Message-ID: <745900399560cd03077ffb3afa5a35cd@mailbox.ijs.si> In-Reply-To: <3b68be24-7ec8-08be-53f4-a4b088840c35@freebsd.org> References: <dc9483611fd37e051fb68532daf10066@mailbox.ijs.si> <3629a441-ee6d-2407-fa13-5ebd8db8d802@freebsd.org> <000c29ee0f3dbd1d433c565023d69e25@mailbox.ijs.si> <a260a332-0c30-2338-bdd8-840524e8bfd8@freebsd.org> <f51cd89227047ff9249d9ecd68cf1646@mailbox.ijs.si> <279e9b67-da23-cdd6-3a77-b084ad8269eb@freebsd.org> <e851f0064ec13ff99d64e63b74f10d58@mailbox.ijs.si> <4a454eef-55ae-b90d-4441-2aa9708fc747@freebsd.org> <20160806041536.GL86883@eureka.lemis.com> <20160806100053.5fpf27pcgona7czp@ivaldir.etoilebsd.net> <alpine.GSO.1.10.1608061107470.5272@multics.mit.edu> <3b68be24-7ec8-08be-53f4-a4b088840c35@freebsd.org>
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On 2016-08-06 21:08, Julian Elischer wrote: > On 6/08/2016 11:09 PM, Benjamin Kaduk wrote: >> On Sat, 6 Aug 2016, Baptiste Daroussin wrote: >>> On Sat, Aug 06, 2016 at 02:15:36PM +1000, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote: >>>> On Friday, 5 August 2016 at 18:56:33 +0300, Andrey A. Chernov >>>> wrote: >>>>> On 05.08.2016 18:44, Mark Martinec wrote: >>>>>> On 2016-08-05 17:23, Andrey Chernov wrote: >>>>>> >>>>>> POSIX does say that the default format should be the same >>>>>> as with "+%a %b %e %H:%M:%S %Z %Y". >>>>>> It also says that %a and %b are locale's abbreviated names. >>>>> It is true for _POSIX_ locale only, as I already say. en_US.* is >>>>> not >>>>> POSIX or C locale. >>>> It still violates POLA. >>>> >>> I really do not think that it violates POLA fiven that the behaviour >>> you are >>> expecting is still available in the default configurtion that is >>> still POSIX. >> Regardless, at a new major release is precisely when it is permissible >> to >> break POLA. > switching from short form to long form is more than a POLA.. short > form has a specific fixed layout > and feeding a long form string into it will break things. >> >>> Set LC_TIME to C and then you are back on your behaviour (and this is >>> the >>> default when you install FreeBSD). >>> >>> locales should be seen as tzdata for exemple, they are a moving >>> target >>> complicated to handle for every locale we do support: 78 for >>> 11.0-RELEASE and >>> 193 if we do count the encoding variants. locales are updated very >>> often (for >>> exemple cldr unicode make a new release of the data every 8 month or >>> so) >> As I understand it, your change will improve the maintainability of >> locales in FreeBSD in the future, which justifies a POLA break at the >> release boundary. >> -Ben $ LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 date FreeBSD 11.0-BETA3 : Friday, August 5, 2016 at 03:20:25 PM CEST FreeBSD 10.3-RELEASE-p6 : Fri Aug 5 15:15:11 CEST 2016 OSX version 10.9.5 : Fri Aug 5 14:57:14 CEST 2016 Fedora Linux 4.6.4-301.fc24.x86_64 : Fri Aug 5 15:10:40 CEST 2016 Debian 8.0 / Linux 4.4.16-v7+ : Fri Aug 5 15:25:49 CEST 2016 It's not just long vs. short forms of a name, it is also the order of fields, their separators, and a 12/24h time form that is different from everyone else and from what we used to have in 10.3. Is it really worth being different? I wonder how many ad-hoc scripts will break. Although as Andrey Chernov correctly noted that the date(1) specs in The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 7 IEEE Std 1003.1, 2013 Edition ( http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/date.html ) says that the default format applies to POSIX locale only: STDOUT When no formatting operand is specified, the output in the POSIX locale shall be equivalent to specifying: date "+%a %b %e %H:%M:%S %Z %Y" imo, unless there is a very good reason not to, the above default format should be applicable to most locales, but at least to English spoken locales. The explicit locale-dependency of %a, %b, and %Z conversion specifications already takes care of most locale-specific idiosyncrasies. Mark
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