os.date & MS Windows XP CRT

[Peter Odding <xolox@...>]

Hi all! Today I crashed the Lua interpreter with a seemingly innocent 
Lua script. The problem was my format string for os.date(), specifically 
%e (guess how long that took me to find...)

Turns out I read about the %e conversion specification at 
opengroup.org[1] while I'm running MS Windows :-|. And indeed the MSDN 
page about strftime[2] doesn't mention %e.

Now comes the fun part: Instead of ignoring/copying invalid 
specifications, the MS Windows XP SP2 CRT crashes (and takes the Lua 
interpreter down with it.)

All the Lua manual has to say about this is that the returned string is 
"formatted according to the same rules as the C function strftime". 
While I understand that Lua depends on the C runtime, maybe there exists 
a minimal subset that can be mentioned in the manual? Otherwise we're 
expecting every user to look up his/her platforms' CRT documentation...

Thanks,

 - Peter

[1] http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/007908799/xsh/strftime.html
[2] http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/fe06s4ak(VS.80).aspx

PS. Interestingly, PHP 5.2.1 doesn't crash on %e, though it does seem to 
use the C runtime's strftime (might be linked against a different runtime?)

PPS. If anyone needs lua binaries before Lua Binaries is updated, I've 
put mine online at http://members.home.nl/xolox/lua/. Compiled with 
VS.NET/C++ Express '05 /O2, Windows SDK /XP32 /RELEASE. Lua compiler 
statically linked of course ;)