GNU `date` accepts every letter `a`-`y` as a military time zone, and all
of them are already in our table except `j`. It is missing because it is
the one letter that does not denote a fixed offset: `j` means *local
time*, so it cannot be expressed as an `Offset` at all.
$ TZ=America/New_York date -d '8j' # 08:00 -0400
$ TZ=America/New_York date -d '2026-01-01 j' # 00:00 -0500
$ TZ=America/New_York date -d '8z' # 04:00 -0400
Because it follows the base zone's DST rules rather than pinning an
offset, it is represented as its own item and recorded on the builder as
a flag rather than as an offset.
- `j` parses as its own item, so `8j`, `8 j`, `j 8` and `8J` all work.
- It is still a time zone item, so `8j utc`, `8 utc j` and `8 j j` are
rejected as a repeated zone, matching GNU.
- The whole alphabetic word is consumed before comparing, so `8jan` still
parses as a date and `jj` is rejected rather than matching a `j` prefix.
- Unknown words remain errors: `8foo` still fails, as it does in GNU.
Verified against GNU coreutils 9.4: all 26 letters `a`-`z` now resolve to
the same instant as GNU, in both a DST and a non-DST base zone.
A fixed offset (e.g. the "UTC" keyword) was applied after relative
items, so "1970/01/01 UTC N seconds" added N seconds to a local
wall-clock that could drift across a DST boundary before being
re-anchored at the offset, yielding an instant off by the DST gap.
Anchor the offset first, then apply relative items.
Fixesuutils/coreutils#12555.
Replace hand-rolled format_offset_colon / format_for_assert helpers
with the new Display impls. Replace local expect_in_range_datetime
test helpers with ParsedDateTime::expect_in_range().
NOTE: This commit only adds tests as the implementation was already
working correctly. These tests document and verify the expected
behavior for the embedded timezone edge case referenced in Debian
bug #851934.
In GNU if using date with relative Months with the -d flag and the target Month does not have the source day (for example 31) GNU overflows the diff in days.
Sylvestre Ledru
Tsolmondorj Natsagdorj
wtc
abhishekpradhan
cerdelen
Chris Dryden
Nicholas Still
yuankunzhang
Daniel Hofstetter
Maxim