Re: Default date output format changed after an upgrade to buster

[Michael Stone <mstone@debian.org>]

On Wed, Sep 11, 2019 at 08:36:49AM +0200, Rainer Dorsch wrote:
> Am Dienstag, 10. September 2019, 22:52:03 CEST schrieb Greg Wooledge:
> > On Tue, Sep 10, 2019 at 10:06:37PM +0200, Rainer Dorsch wrote:
> > > after an upgrade from stretch to buster, the date default output changed
> > > on my system
> > >
> > > As an example:
> > >
> > > Tue Sep 10 19:50:26 CEST 2019   (stretch)
> > > Tue 10 Sep 2019 09:26:33 PM CEST      (buster)
> > >
> > > I am just wondering if this is a known issue or if another configuration
> > > change during the upgrade caused this.
> >
> > https://www.mail-archive.com/debian-user@lists.debian.org/msg741032.html
>
> Many thanks for all the replies. Greg, the perfect explanation you already
> gave here
>
> https://www.mail-archive.com/debian-user@lists.debian.org/msg741096.html
>
> (that explains why buster behaves differently).
>
> I think it would have been worth an entry for apt-listchanges, since it might
> at least change the output of some local scripts (like it did here).

apt-listchanges in what? If you run the stretch date on buster, you'll 
get the same output. The change is that the localized string changed to 
something more sensible and date uses the localized string. If a script 
is relying on the output of a program like date without specifying 
either the C locale or a date format, it's almost certainly doing 
something wrong--those strings are expected to change depending on 
things like locale settings, and are for humans to read, not programs.