Re: Problem with os.date?

[roberto@... (Roberto Ierusalimschy)]

> I was browsing through the code for os.date and spotted the extra  
> feature - not mentioned in the book, but in the reference manual,  
> that you can use "!" as the first character to use UTC rather than  
> local time.
> 
> However if you use that character only, rather than get the default  
> date string (%c) in UTC format you get an error about the format  
> being too long:
> 
> print (os.date ("!")) --> 'date' format too long
> 
> That message is slightly confusing. Perhaps:
> 
> * Change to %c if the string is empty after removing the !
> 
> or
> 
> * Give an error 'no date string' or similar if the string is empty  
> after removing the !

Actually, the message is more than "slightly confusing"; it is plainly
wrong :)

We will fix that, but it seems that the behavior of os.date("!") should
be coherent with that of os.date(""): that is, it should return the
empty string.

-- Roberto