Re: [PATCH] Accept dates before 2000/01/01 when specified as seconds since the epoch

[Johannes Sixt <J.Sixt@eudaptics.com>]

Junio C Hamano wrote:
> 
> I vaguely recall hitting the same issue soon after date.c was
> done, and sending in a patch in the same spirit but with
> different implementation (I essentially duplicated that "seconds
> since epoch" without any cutoff as the last ditch fallback) long
> time ago (this was before I took git over; the patch was rejected).
> 
> It almost makes me wonder if it is better to introduce a special
> syntax to denote "seconds since epoch plus timezone offset" for
> our Porcelain use, instead of keeping this arbitrary cut-off
> date which nobody can agree on and which forces us to roll back
> from time to time.  For one thing, such a syntax would allow us
> to talk about a timestamp before the epoch.
> 
> Perhaps
> 
>         "epoch" [-+] [0-9]+ " " [-+][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]
> 
> ?

OTOH, the previous limit 2000/01/01 was completely arbitrary, while the
new limit 100000000secs has some justification: Numbers with fewer
digits could be mistaken as dates.

-- Hannes