[Octave-bug-tracker] [bug #59979] Unexpected format for output from datevec

[Tasos Papastylianou]

Follow-up Comment #20, bug #59979 (project octave):

How matlab deals with 'carryover' is described here: 
https://uk.mathworks.com/help/matlab/matlab_prog/carryover-in-date-vectors-and-strings.html

How matlab deals with time "zero" as a special case is described here (see
first point in Limitations)
https://uk.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/datevec.html#btfyhto-4

Note that there is nothing special about the 'zero' date. It is simply the
31st Dec 2BC. Effectively it seems that matlab has chosen to represent the
31st Dec of year -1 (i.e. 2BC, since the year '0' corresponds to 1BC.) as
0,0,0 instead of -1,12,31 for purely cosmetic reasons (i.e. to provide a
'zero' date). It does this by treating it as a special exception to the
datevec output. 

I honestly don't care that octave chooses to represent this 'properly' as
opposed to 'cosmetically'. In fact I think it makes more sense to represent
the 'real' date rather than a 'zero'.

However, when it comes to the carryover issue, that is a separate issue, one
that I think matlab does correctly.

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