Bug#179139: libc6: invalid date from date -d 1969-12-31

[Travis Crump <pretzalz@techhouse.org>]

Jeff Bailey wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 30, 2003 at 09:59:54PM -0500, Stan Heckman wrote:
>
>
> > $ date --version | head -3; date -d 1969-12-31
> > date (coreutils) 4.5.2
> > Written by David MacKenzie.
>
>
> > date: invalid date `1969-12-31'
>
>
> > I expected output something like like "Wed Dec 31 00:00:00 EST 1969",
> > not "invalid date".
>
>
> > All dates before 1970-01-01 that I have tried seem to produce "invalid
> > date"; all dates after 1970-01-01 that I have tried produce the output
> > I expect.
>
>
> I suspect that you'll find that all dates before 1970 fail and that all
> dates after Mon Jan 19 04:14:07 2038 (GMT) also fail.
>
> Why are you reporting this as a bug against glibc?  That's how time_t
> works.  Search google for "time_t" and "epoch" for more information.
>
> Closing this bug.
>
> Tks,
> Jeff Bailey

$ date --version | head -3; date -d 1969-12-31
date (coreutils) 4.5.2
Written by David MacKenzie.

Wed Dec 31 00:00:00 EST 1969

Obviously, it is not the fundamental behaviour of date, nor is it 
something solely attributable to date since it works with the same 
version of date when using libc6 2.2.5-14.3.  Therefore a logical 
conclusion is that libc6 2.3.1-10 doesn't play nicely with a date[in 
testing] compiled with libc6 2.2.5-14.3.  But since the date/coreutils 
in unstable is compiled against 2.3.1-1, this still might not be valid[I 
have no idea], but it requires a closer look.