Re: Bug in format-time-string in emacs 21.1?

[Paul Eggert]

> From: Jason Rumney <address@hidden>
> Date: 12 Mar 2002 21:35:54 +0000
> 
> Rather than putting a note in PROBLEMS specific to %h on Windows, it
> might be better to modify the doc-string for format-time-string, to
> make it clear which specifiers are guaranteed to work, and which are
> POSIX.2 or GNU extensions, and will only work on plaforms that
> support them.

This suggestion is a bit obsolescent, as %h is required by the current
C standard (C99).  And POSIX.2 is now obsolete; it has been folded
into POSIX.1 (as of POSIX 1003.1-2001).

I suggest adding a sentence like "Not all platforms support
locale-specific formats" to the format-time-string doc string; that
will document the general problem.  I don't think it's worth
documenting all the ins and outs of the various standards and
implementations in the format-time-string doc; that will consume too
much space and won't be all that useful.


> Alternatively, we could introduce more conditional blocks to
> strftime.c to do something sensible

That would be a pain to support reliably.  There are lots of little
gotchas in this area.  It's simpler just to let the underlying
strftime handle (or mishandle) locale-related stuff.