On 12/20/2017 12:42 PM, Karel Zak wrote: > On Wed, Dec 20, 2017 at 04:29:43PM +0000, Adam Sampson wrote: >> Karel Zak <kzak@xxxxxxxxxx> writes: >> >>> The problem is that year 1752 is very specific to British Empire and >>> for example Catholic Europe moved to the Gregorian calendar in year >>> 1582. >> ... >>> * later (after warning in release notes) we can make --gregorian as >>> the default >> >> The date of cal's switch is specified in POSIX as 1752, though: >> http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/cal.html >> (with a note that future versions may make this depend on the locale). > > It sounds like too complicated semantic to depend on locale. Don't > also forget that switch from one calendar to another means extra > calculation (for example skip 11 days for British Empire way, etc). > >> So if the default is changed, it would be worth noting the deviation >> from POSIX in the man page, and maybe even defaulting to the old > > Good point. > >> behaviour if POSIXLY_CORRECT is defined, as, e.g., coreutils does for >> other bits of dubious but mandated behaviour. >> >> I wonder if it might be more helpful just to report an error if cal is >> run for a year prior to 1926 without explicitly specifying which >> calendar to use? > > I think we can follow the current default behavior for ever, and just > add --iso/--gregorian for people who care. I think the standard is being misunderstood. Issue 2 required the Gregorian format: _____________________________ http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/007908799/xcu/cal.html DESCRIPTION The cal utility writes a Gregorian calendar to standard output. If the year operand is specified, a calendar for that year is written. If no operands are specified, a calendar for the current month is written. _____________________________ The reason for the change in issue 6 was to *allow* Julian: _____________________________ http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/cal.html Issue 6 The DESCRIPTION is updated to allow for traditional behavior for years before the adoption of the Gregorian calendar. _____________________________ There is no default format specified, only what cal(1) shall be capable of. There is a similar requirement for Julian placed on date(1). Coreutils date command not only defaults to proleptic Gregorian, but doesn't have any Julian capability. So I think having cal(1) default to proleptic Gregorian is not only allowed by POSIX, but it should be expected to correlate with date(1). > > Karel > -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe util-linux" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
