Replaced the former date parser with a rewrite. No more yacc/bison needed.

1 files changed, 64 insertions, 52 deletions

diff --git a/docs/libcurl/curl_getdate.3 b/docs/libcurl/curl_getdate.3
index 6e936cf13..65a0e738b 100644
--- a/docs/libcurl/curl_getdate.3
+++ b/docs/libcurl/curl_getdate.3
@@ -4,35 +4,36 @@
 .\"
 .TH curl_getdate 3 "5 March 2001" "libcurl 7.0" "libcurl Manual"
 .SH NAME
-curl_getdate - Convert an date in a ASCII string to number of seconds since
-January 1, 1970
+curl_getdate - Convert an date string to number of seconds since January 1,
+1970
 .SH SYNOPSIS
 .B #include <curl/curl.h>
 .sp
-.BI "time_t curl_getdate(char *" datestring ", time_t *"now" );
+.BI "time_t curl_getdate(char *" datestring ", time_t *"now" );"
 .ad
 .SH DESCRIPTION
-This function returns the number of seconds since January 1st 1970, for the
-date and time that the
-.I datestring
-parameter specifies. The 
-.I now
-parameter is there and should hold the current time to allow the datestring to
-specify relative dates/times. Read further in the date string parser section
-below.
+This function returns the number of seconds since January 1st 1970 in the UTC
+time zone, for the date and time that the \fIdatestring\fP parameter
+specifies. The \fInow\fP parameter is not used, pass a NULL there.
+
+\fBNOTE:\fP This function was rewritten for the 7.12.2 release and this
+documentation covers the functionality of the new one. The new one is not
+feature-complete with the old one, but most of the formats supported by the
+new one was supported by the old too.
 .SH PARSING DATES AND TIMES
-A "date" is a string, possibly empty, containing many items separated by
-whitespace.  The whitespace may be omitted when no ambiguity arises.  The
-empty string means the beginning of today (i.e., midnight).  Order of the
-items is immaterial.  A date string may contain many flavors of items:
+A "date" is a string containing several items separated by whitespace. The
+order of the items is immaterial.  A date string may contain many flavors of
+items:
 .TP 0.8i
 .B calendar date items
-This can be specified in a number of different ways. Including 1970-09-17, 70-9-17, 70-09-17, 9/17/72, 24 September 1972, 24 Sept 72, 24 Sep 72, Sep 24, 1972, 24-sep-72, 24sep72.
-The year can also be omitted, for example: 9/17 or "sep 17".
+Can be specified several ways. Month names can only be three-letter
+abbrivations, numbers can be zero-prefixed and the year may use 2 or 4 digits.
+Examples: 06 Nov 1994, 06-Nov-94 and Nov-94 6.
 .TP
 .B time of the day items
-This string specifies the time on a given day. Syntax supported includes:
-18:19:0, 18:19, 6:19pm, 18:19-0500 (for specifying the time zone as well).
+This string specifies the time on a given day. You must specify it with 6
+digits with two colons: HH:MM:SS. To not include the time in a date string,
+will make the function assume 00:00:00. Example: 18:19:21.
 .TP
 .B time zone items
 Specifies international time zone. There are a few acronyms supported, but in
@@ -40,41 +41,52 @@ general you should instead use the specific relative time compared to
 UTC. Supported formats include: -1200, MST, +0100.
 .TP
 .B day of the week items
-Specifies a day of the week. If this is mentioned alone it means that day of
-the week in the future.
-
-Days of the week may be spelled out in full: `Sunday', `Monday', etc or they
-may be abbreviated to their first three letters, optionally followed by a
-period.  The special abbreviations `Tues' for `Tuesday', `Wednes' for
-`Wednesday' and `Thur' or `Thurs' for `Thursday' are also allowed.
-
-A number may precede a day of the week item to move forward supplementary
-weeks.  It is best used in expression like `third monday'.  In this context,
-`last DAY' or `next DAY' is also acceptable; they move one week before or
-after the day that DAY by itself would represent.
-.TP
-.B relative items
-A relative item adjusts a date (or the current date if none) forward or
-backward. Example syntax includes: "1 year", "1 year ago", "2 days", "4
-weeks".
-
-The string `tomorrow' is worth one day in the future (equivalent to `day'),
-the string `yesterday' is worth one day in the past (equivalent to `day ago').
+Specifies a day of the week. Days of the week may be spelled out in full:
+`Sunday', `Monday', etc or they may be abbreviated to their first three
+letters. This is usually not info that adds anything.
 .TP
 .B pure numbers
-If the decimal number is of the form YYYYMMDD and no other calendar date item
-appears before it in the date string, then YYYY is read as the year, MM as the
-month number and DD as the day of the month, for the specified calendar date.
+If a decimal number of the form YYYYMMDD appears, then YYYY is read as the
+year, MM as the month number and DD as the day of the month, for the specified
+calendar date.
 .PP
+.SH EXAMPLES
+.nf
+Sun, 06 Nov 1994 08:49:37 GMT
+Sunday, 06-Nov-94 08:49:37 GMT
+Sun Nov  6 08:49:37 1994
+06 Nov 1994 08:49:37 GMT
+06-Nov-94 08:49:37 GMT
+Nov  6 08:49:37 1994
+06 Nov 1994 08:49:37
+06-Nov-94 08:49:37
+1994 Nov 6 08:49:37
+GMT 08:49:37 06-Nov-94 Sunday
+94 6 Nov 08:49:37
+1994 Nov 6
+06-Nov-94
+Sun Nov 6 94
+1994.Nov.6
+Sun/Nov/6/94/GMT
+Sun, 06 Nov 1994 08:49:37 CET
+06 Nov 1994 08:49:37 EST
+Sun, 12 Sep 2004 15:05:58 -0700
+Sat, 11 Sep 2004 21:32:11 +0200
+20040912 15:05:58 -0700
+20040911 +0200
+.fi
+.SH STANDARDS
+This parser was written to handle date formats specified in RFC 822 (including
+the update in RFC 1123) using time zone name or time zone delta and RFC 850
+(obsoleted by RFC 1036) and ANSI C's asctime() format. These formats are the
+only ones RFC2616 says HTTP applications may use.
 .SH RETURN VALUE
-This function returns zero when it fails to parse the date string. Otherwise
-it returns the number of seconds as described.
-.SH AUTHORS
-Originally written by Steven M. Bellovin <smb@research.att.com> while at the
-University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  Later tweaked by a couple of
-people on Usenet.  Completely overhauled by Rich $alz <rsalz@bbn.com> and Jim
-Berets <jberets@bbn.com> in August, 1990.
+This function returns -1 when it fails to parse the date string. Otherwise it
+returns the number of seconds as described.
+.SH REWRITE
+The former version of this function was built with yacc and was not only very
+large, it was also never quite understood and it wasn't possible to build with
+non-GNU tools since only Bison could make it thread-safe!
 
-It has been modified extensively since imported to curl.
-.SH "SEE ALSO"
-.BR GNU date(1)
+The rewrite was done for 7.12.2. The new one is much smaller and use simpler
+code.