Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2018 14:57:19 +0100 From: Ralph Corderoy <ra...@inputplus.co.uk> Message-ID: <20180726135719.844a821...@orac.inputplus.co.uk>
| You still seem to be referring to the first version I wrote? Yes, I was in the early part of that message. I was more explaining my earlier message than responding to your second one. | Here's the second one again that's being replied to. Yes, I saw that too... | The first invocation of `date -d @NNN' uses `42', not the user's | $SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH and discards stderr. If its exit value is good then | the second `date -d @NNN' uses $SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH and doesn't discard | stderr, nor the exit value. Yes, I saw that too - but you're relying upon all versions of date doing sane parsing, which in general I prefer not to do. You cannot get around that with a demonstration of what happens, as that just shows one version. As I said, I know (somewhat) the -d parser on netbsd, which I know handles the @N form, but I kind of doubt has much in the way of error checking there. | Well, it spots some flaws with SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH. One version of date does. Yes. | Yes, they might fling it at atoi(3), I agree. I don't think that's | nmh's look out, and date is best off checking the parameter. Again, it depends how seriously you want to take that "must validate..." rule. If you really believe in that, then you need to do the validation. If it isn't relaly all that important (which would be my take on it) then you can just do it whatever actually works. | OK, but I want all of them checked apart from those I explicitly `|| | true'. That suggests a lot of clutter, or a lot of `&&' chaining before | the `|| true'. It depends, but yes, sometimes. But -e really is very difficult to use properly, is wildly misunderstood, and most people who know shells will advise against using it (not that it doesn't work as it should, but that even people who know a lot about all of this don't really follow the "as it should" part very well - it is very very easy to trap yourself.) kre -- nmh-workers https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers