bug#36383: date command processes timezone differently when doing math

[Assaf Gordon]

tag 36383 notabug
close 36383
stop

Hello,

On Tue, Jun 25, 2019 at 04:10:07PM -0700, Brian Woods wrote:
> When doing a math operation to a date command it appear to process the
> timezone differently.
[...]
>
> #echo $datNow
> 2019-06-25 15:21:34
>
> #date -d "$datNow + 1 minute" "+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S" --debug
> date: parsed date part: (Y-M-D) 2019-06-25
> date: parsed time part: 15:21:34 UTC+01
> date: parsed relative part: +1 minutes
> date: input timezone: parsed date/time string (+01)

Thank you for providing detailed examples with "--debug",
makes things much easier to troubleshoot.

The issue is that a time string (HH:MM:SS) followed by a plus
sign and a number is *always* taken to be a time zone.

Using a value other than 1 will show it more clearly:

  $ date -d "$datNow + 8 minutes" "+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S" --debug
  date: parsed date part: (Y-M-D) 2019-06-25
  date: parsed time part: 15:21:34 UTC+08
  date: parsed relative part: +1 minutes
  date: input timezone: parsed date/time string (+08)

The "+8" part is treated as timezone,
and the remaining text ("minutes") is taken as a one-minute time
adjustment.

One solution is to just remove the plus sign:

  $ date -d "$datNow 8 minutes" "+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S" --debug
  date: parsed date part: (Y-M-D) 2019-06-25
  date: parsed time part: 15:21:34
  date: parsed relative part: +8 minutes
  date: input timezone: system default
  [...]
  2019-06-25 15:29:34

Another is to specify the time zone:

  $ date -d "$datNow +00:00 +8 minutes" "+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S" --debug
  date: parsed date part: (Y-M-D) 2019-06-25
  date: parsed time part: 15:21:34 UTC+00
  date: parsed relative part: +8 minutes
  date: input timezone: parsed date/time string (+00)
  [...]
  2019-06-25 09:29:34


More examples of adjusting time strings are here (your example is similar
to case #1):
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-coreutils/2018-10/msg00126.html

As such, I'm closing this ticket but discussion can continue by replying
to this thread.

regards,
 - assaf