Re: findutils 4.6.0 v. Tru64 (strftime() v. "%F"?)

[Eric Blake]

[adding bug-gnulib]

On 05/25/2017 12:43 AM, Steven M. Schweda wrote:
>    Tru64 is not alone.  On an old HP-UX system, it's different but still
> sub-ideal:
> 
> dy# findutils-4.6.0/find/find . -name fred -printf '%C+\n'
> May+16:18:11.0000000000
> 
>    There, "man strftime" says:
> 
> [...]
>       The following directives are provided for backward compatibility with
>       the directives supported by date(1) and the ctime(3C) functions.
>       These directives may be removed in a future release.  It is
>       recommended that the directives above be used in preference to those
>       below.
> [...]
>            %F        Locale's full month name (use %B instead).
> [...]
> 
>    So, again, trusting the non-GNU strftime() seems unwise.

Gnulib just recently had a cleanup where we realized that the 'strftime'
module was misnamed:
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnulib/2017-04/msg00167.html
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnulib/2017-05/msg00022.html

So yes, either findutils should be using nstrftime() and not strftime()
(which will guarantee that these sequences work), or it is indeed time
to patch gnulib to provide a replacement strftime() on platforms that
are not POSIX-compliant (and then still patch findutils to use the newer
gnulib).

It's actually probably easier it findutils just starts using
nstrftime(), regardless of what else gnulib does, but it's at least
pointing out that gnulib should be documenting the known pitfalls in
native strftime() implementations.

-- 
Eric Blake, Principal Software Engineer
Red Hat, Inc.           +1-919-301-3266
Virtualization:  qemu.org | libvirt.org

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