Doc #51538 [Com]: strptime() buggy prior PHP 5.2.0

Edit report at http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=51538&edit=1 ID: 51538 Comment by: alex dot schuch at gmx dot de Reported by: alex dot schuch at gmx dot de Summary: strptime() buggy prior PHP 5.2.0 Status: Open Type: Documentation Problem Package: Documentation problem Operating System: irrelevant? PHP Version: Irrelevant Block user comment: N New Comment: I just had a look at the PHP source: svn diff -c218534 ext/standard/datetime.c The fix to this problem was the initialisation of the struct with zero (using memset()). From the manual "man 3 strptime": In principle, this function does not initialize tm but only stores the values specified. This means that tm should be initialized before the call. Details differ a bit between different Unix systems. The glibc implementation does not touch those fields which are not explicitly specified, except that it recomputes the tm_wday and tm_yday field if any of the year, month, or day elements changed. So in easy words: The elements of the struct are not initialised. strptime() only sets the values according to the pattern so that non-given values were not overwritten - they stayed at their uninitialised value. Previous Comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2010-08-10 19:13:37] philip@php.net Surely it's not "random", so is there some logic behind these incorrect [and seemingly random] values prior to 5.2.0? Or maybe we could use the word 'undefined' instead. Thoughts? The changelog entry is "strptime() does not initialize the internal date storage structure" although I'm unsure exactly what that means. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2010-04-12 11:10:58] alex dot schuch at gmx dot de Description: ------------ A note should be added to strptime() documentation, as the function is not working according to the documentation before PHP 5.2.0. http://bugs.php.net/38524 http://php.net/ChangeLog-5.php Maybe something like: Prior PHP 5.2.0, strptime() returns random values for parts not included in the format string (see bug #38524). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- Edit this bug report at http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=51538&edit=1