Guy Harris said:
The original asctime() specified exactly what the out buffer would contain. Did it? How? That is, what did old manual pages actually say? If the FreeBSD man page repository is to be believed: http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi? query=ctime&manpath=Unix+Seventh+Edition&format=html
then it said:
Ctime converts a time pointed to by clock such as returned by time(2) into ASCII and returns a pointer to a 26-character string in the fol- lowing form. All the fields have constant width.
Sun Sep 16 01:03:52 1973\n\0
Right. I've also been pointed at other documents saying basically the same. It looks like the people who turned that specification into C89 got it slightly wrong. But I doubt it's going to get changed now. It looks like the best we'll get is to have HISTORICAL and STANDARDIZED versions, selected at compile time. -- Clive D.W. Feather | Work: <clive@demon.net> | Tel: +44 20 8495 6138 Internet Expert | Home: <clive@davros.org> | Fax: +44 870 051 9937 Demon Internet | WWW: http://www.davros.org | Mobile: +44 7973 377646 Thus plc | |