Bug 130503

Summary:	/bin/date broken when using 'ago'
Product:	Gentoo Linux	Reporter:	flobber <flobber>
Component:	[OLD] Core system	Assignee:	Gentoo's Team for Core System packages <base-system>
Status:	RESOLVED INVALID
Severity:	major	CC:	f5d8fd51ed1e804c9e8d0357e8614e0493b06e96
Priority:	High
Version:	unspecified
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Package list:		Runtime testing required:	---

Description flobber 2006-04-19 11:38:20 UTC

The command

  date -d '1 hour ago'

works, but

  date - d '1 hour 1 minutes ago'

does not, the "ago" is ignored.

Earlier versions of date didn't have this bug.

Broken version:
  date (GNU coreutils) 5.94

Comment 1 SpanKY gentoo-dev

2006-04-19 11:53:52 UTC

you need to do `date -d '1 hour ago 1 minute ago'`

Comment 2 flobber 2006-04-19 12:17:46 UTC

(In reply to comment #1)
> you need to do `date -d '1 hour ago 1 minute ago'`

For at least the last 10 years '1 hour 1 minute ago' was
taken as -61 minutes not +59 minutes.  I have a couple of
scripts that broke due to this BUG.

Comment 3 flobber 2006-04-19 12:31:40 UTC

Just for the record, the oldest GNU date I have available is 1.16
from 1997 and it takes it as -61 minutes as does 5.3.0 from 2005.

And the notation of '1 hour ago 1 minute ago' is interpreted
by those versions as '(((1 hour) ago) 1 minute) ago' giving
+59 minutes.  So this syntax is not even backwards compatible.

Comment 4 SpanKY gentoo-dev

2006-04-20 06:02:52 UTC

the documentation suggests the new behavior is correct (confirmed with upstream)

if you still feel this is a bug, talk with upstream
http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-coreutils