Greg Hudson wrote:
>Perhaps this situation is most easily resolved by someone writing a
>getdate parser which doesn't use yacc. Date parsing is, I think,
>right on the edge of where yacc is a big complexity-saver, given how
>many rough edges yacc has.
>
+1
>In the meantime, checking the .c file into CVS is probably
>best... assuming it will even build on Windows machines.
>
+0
Ben Collins-Sussman wrote:
>That would be a neat project... the .y file in our tree does some
>crazy stuff, though. It understands a whole bunch of "conventional"
>date/time formats, as well as magical ones like "last friday", "next
>week", etc. I wouldn't want to rewrite that myself. [:-)]
>
Conventional for whom?
* Even ignoring the warnings you mentioned, the code isn't APRized,
and I don't think it can be, if we keep generating the C file with
yacc/byacc/bison.
* Every one of these parser generators has its own quirks, and works
a bit differently. Do we want to be tied to a particular version
of a particular generator?
* The parser tries to recognize notations that are ambiguous, like
the famous x/y/z: it'll parse that either as y/m/d or m/d/y, but
what if, being from Europe, I write d/m/y? Or more likely, d.m.y,
which isn't supported at all. On top of that, it doesn't support
ISO 8601 format -- only the date notation.
* Which brings up my last (but not least) objection: the parser is
not localizable. L10n is more than just providing translations for
messages.
I think you may be taking the "supports all CVS features" promise a bit
too far here. By all means, let's support the features, but not the
misfeatures, please. When was the last time you told CVS to up -r 'last
friday'?
I don't think we should support any notation that's ambiguous. I'd even
say it's enough to support ISO 8601
(http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-time.html,
http://ano2000.kpnqwest.pt/gen_8601.htm), including interval notation.
Things like "today" and "yesterday" are nice, but if we support "last
friday," we might as well know when "granny's birthday" is.
Brane
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Brane �ibej
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Received on Sat Oct 21 14:36:32 2006