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Re: CVS update: ADDED: subversion/libsvn_subr getdate.y

From: Branko Èibej <brane_at_xbc.nu>
Date: 2001-07-05 11:08:20 CEST

Karl Fogel wrote:

>Branko �ibej <brane@xbc.nu> writes:
>
>>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'?
>>
>
>-1. I don't think Ben has taken CVS compatibility too far at all --
>this is the sort of CVS feature we should continue to support.
>
>I have done "last friday" type queries more than once before. I know
>that Brian Fitzpatrick also has, suspect others have also enjoyed the
>convenience.
>
Hum. I stand corrected. People will do the weirdest things. :-)

>>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.
>>
>
>+1 on the general principle you propose, we simply aren't reaching it
>in one step.
>
>Ideally, we would support nothing ambiguous. However, "last friday"
>is not ambiguous, whereas "xx/xx/xx" is. Now come on, "Granny's
>birthday" is not a fair example -- how is Subversion supposed to know
>who Granny is? :-)
>
O.K., how about "easter sunday" then? That's nice and deterministic. :-)

>As far as attaining the ideal goes, here is our situation right now:
>
> 1. Before Ben's change, we didn't have any date parsing at all.
>
> 2. After Ben's change, we have the date-parsing functionality that
> CVS has, which, though it certainly has its warts, is familiar
> to many people and does the right thing most of the time.
>
> 3. We do not currently have any code that satisfies the principle of
> supporting various unambiguous date formats, localizably.
>
>Granted that (3) is the ideal, I don't see why we should drop back to
>(1) just because (2) isn't absolute perfection. Let's support what we
>can right away, and feel free to improve it when we are able.
>
Could we at least remove support for ambiguous notations from the parser?

I'm inclined to agree with Greg Hudson: It's not a good idea to plan on
removing functionality.

-- 
Brane �ibej
    home:    <brane_at_xbc.nu>             http://www.xbc.nu/brane/
    work:    <branko.cibej_at_hermes.si>   http://www.hermes-softlab.com/
      ACM:   <brane_at_acm.org>            http://www.acm.org/
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Received on Sat Oct 21 14:36:33 2006

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