Hi list,

I recently noticed (took a while of head-scratching like "WTF? Something is
very weird here, but what is it?") that after the upgrade from etch to lenny,
the default display format for date/time when doing a "ls -al" for the german
locale unfortunately changed from

etch: »31.12.2008 12:34« to
lenny: »13. Dez 12:34« and (IMO abdominable...!):
lenny: »13. Dez 2006« (for older entries)

Is there an easy way to get back my desired format as it has been on etch,
preferably without the need to customize a locale file?

As a workaround, I changed LC_TIME to "en_US.UTF-8", as this provides me at
least with an ISO-8601-conform format, but I'd prefer the numerical display
for german like it has been on etch.

Greetings,
hk47


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bugtracker@slideomania.com wrote:
> Hi list,
>
> I recently noticed (took a while of head-scratching like "WTF? Something is
> very weird here, but what is it?") that after the upgrade from etch to lenny,
> the default display format for date/time when doing a "ls -al" for the german
> locale unfortunately changed from
>
> etch: »31.12.2008 12:34« to
> lenny: »13. Dez 12:34« and (IMO abdominable...!):
> lenny: »13. Dez 2006« (for older entries)

That looks horrible, indeed.

> Is there an easy way to get back my desired format as it has been on etch,
> preferably without the need to customize a locale file?

Probably not.

> As a workaround, I changed LC_TIME to "en_US.UTF-8", as this provides me at
> least with an ISO-8601-conform format, but I'd prefer the numerical display
> for german like it has been on etch.

This looks promising

http://ccollins.wordpress.com/2009/01/06/how-to-change-date-formats-on-ubuntu/

HTH,
Johannes
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Osamu Aoki wrote:
> It was important to use en_IE when we were using non-UTF-8 locales.
>
> Now even en_US.UTF-8 gives nice "2008-12-29 05:43" display.

IIUC, OP wants "29.12.2008 05:43" instead. He uses "2008-12-29 05:43" as
a workaround.

Johannes

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On 2009-01-19 15:17 +0100, Johannes Wiedersich wrote:

> Osamu Aoki wrote:
>> It was important to use en_IE when we were using non-UTF-8 locales.
>>
>> Now even en_US.UTF-8 gives nice "2008-12-29 05:43" display.
>
> IIUC, OP wants "29.12.2008 05:43" instead. He uses "2008-12-29 05:43" as
> a workaround.

This can be achieved with the ls --time-style option, see
(Info "(coreutils) Formatting file timestamps").

Sven


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Am Montag, 19. Januar 2009 11:09, schrieb bugtracker@slideomania.com:

> Hi list,

Hi myself,

> I recently noticed (took a while of head-scratching like "WTF? Something is
> very weird here, but what is it?") that after the upgrade from etch to
> lenny, the default display format for date/time when doing a "ls -al" for
> the german locale unfortunately changed from
>
> etch: »31.12.2008 12:34« to
> lenny: »13. Dez 12:34« and (IMO abdominable...!):
> lenny: »13. Dez 2006« (for older entries)

silly me. Seems like I've been *very* confused this morning. The claim that
for etch with German locales the date display format would be like above
simply isn't true at all. My apologies, dunno how this came to my mind -
perhaps a DOS console clawed it's way up from the abyss... Now for some
reality checks.

I'm comparing the date display format ($ ls -l) for some locales between etch
and lenny (using etch at home and lenny at work; beeing at home right now, so
can check for etch; lenny output from memory, which is hopefully serving
right this time).

LC_TIME= | etch | lenny
-------------------------------------------------
de_DE.UTF-8 | 2007-01-19 21:32 | Jan 19 2007
en_DK.UTF-8 | 2007-01-19 21:32 | Jan 19 2007
en_US.UTF-8 | 2007-01-19 21:32 | 2007-01-19 21:32
POSIX | Jan 19 2007 | Jan 19 2007
C | Jan 19 2007 | Jan 19 2007

My state of confusion started this morning, when I was confronted with a
POSIX/C style date format using the German locales on lenny. As you can see
from the table, in lenny suddenly some locales seem to have changed from ISO
8601 style to POSIX/C style. Is this intentional behaviour, or something that
should be reported as a bug? Again, I consider POSIX/C style to be horrible.

Just for reference, [1] claims that "The locale support for the international
date standard of yyyy-mm-dd (ISO 8601 date format) is provided by the locale
called en_DK, "English in Denmark", which is a bit of joke :-)".

Well, either this *is* a bug in the locales package (well, hope so), or the
joke from Debian reference needs an update.

[1] http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/reference/ch-tune.en.html
see "9.7.6 ISO 8601 date format locale"

Again, I'm very sorry for any confusion I might have caused.
hk47


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Am Montag, 19. Januar 2009 14:31, schrieb Johannes Wiedersich:

> > etch: »31.12.2008 12:34« to
> > lenny: »13. Dez 12:34« and (IMO abdominable...!):
> > lenny: »13. Dez 2006« (for older entries)
>
> That looks horrible, indeed.
>
> > Is there an easy way to get back my desired format as it has been on
> > etch, preferably without the need to customize a locale file?
>
> Probably not.
>
> > As a workaround, I changed LC_TIME to "en_US.UTF-8", as this provides me
> > at least with an ISO-8601-conform format, but I'd prefer the numerical
> > display for german like it has been on etch.

Please see my replay-to-myself on this topic. On etch, ISO 8601 *is* standard
for »LC_TIME=de_DE.UTF-8«, »DD.MM.YYYY hh.mm« just somehow came up to me.

> This looks promising
>
>http://ccollins.wordpress.com/2009/01/06/how-to-change-date-formats-on-ubuntu/

Found that this morning, too. Seems like the proper way to fix my imaginary
problem...

> HTH,
> Johannes

Thanks for your reply,
hk47


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On 2009-01-19 21:59 +0100, bugtracker@slideomania.com wrote:

> My state of confusion started this morning, when I was confronted with a
> POSIX/C style date format using the German locales on lenny. As you can see
> from the table, in lenny suddenly some locales seem to have changed from ISO
> 8601 style to POSIX/C style. Is this intentional behaviour, or something that
> should be reported as a bug? Again, I consider POSIX/C style to be horrible.

This is intentional, see the coreutils NEWS file:

,----[ /usr/share/doc/coreutils/NEWS.gz ]
| ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
| However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
| if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
| attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
`----

The locales did not change, just the behavior of ls.

Sven


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Am Montag, 19. Januar 2009 15:47, schrieb Sven Joachim:

> On 2009-01-19 15:17 +0100, Johannes Wiedersich wrote:
> > Osamu Aoki wrote:
> >> It was important to use en_IE when we were using non-UTF-8 locales.
> >>
> >> Now even en_US.UTF-8 gives nice "2008-12-29 05:43" display.
> >
> > IIUC, OP wants "29.12.2008 05:43" instead. He uses "2008-12-29 05:43" as
> > a workaround.
>
> This can be achieved with the ls --time-style option, see
> (Info "(coreutils) Formatting file timestamps").

Checked »man ls«, »--full-time« also gives ISO 8601 style, plus some more info
like seemingly timezone adjustments, even for »LC_TIME=POSIX«.
The »--time-style«-option is unfortunately not mentioned in the man pages, so
users unfamiliar with »info« will most probably miss this. Thanks for pointig
this out.

hk47


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Am Montag, 19. Januar 2009 22:15, schrieb Sven Joachim:

> On 2009-01-19 21:59 +0100, bugtracker@slideomania.com wrote:
> > My state of confusion started this morning, when I was confronted with a
> > POSIX/C style date format using the German locales on lenny. As you can
> > see from the table, in lenny suddenly some locales seem to have changed
> > from ISO 8601 style to POSIX/C style. Is this intentional behaviour, or
> > something that should be reported as a bug? Again, I consider POSIX/C
> > style to be horrible.
>
> This is intentional, see the coreutils NEWS file:
>
> ,----[ /usr/share/doc/coreutils/NEWS.gz ]
>
> | ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not
> | --time-style='posix-long-iso'. However, the 'locale' time style now
> | behaves like 'posix-long-iso' if your locale settings appear to be messed
> | up. This change
> | attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
>
> `----
>
> The locales did not change, just the behavior of ls.
>
> Sven

Will have a look at this tomorrow when I'm at the lenny box. Can't get it by
now what they consider to "be the best of both worlds", and why en_US
suddenly is the only setting that gets me ISO 8601 resp. 'posix-long-iso'.

hk47


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Am Montag, 19. Januar 2009, schrieb Sven Joachim:

> This is intentional, see the coreutils NEWS file:
>
> ,----[ /usr/share/doc/coreutils/NEWS.gz ]
>
> | ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not
> | --time-style='posix-long-iso'. However, the 'locale' time style now
> | behaves like 'posix-long-iso' if your locale settings appear to be messed
> | up. This change
> | attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
>
> `----
>
> The locales did not change, just the behavior of ls.
>
> Sven

I took a look at the file you mentioned; still don't understand the rationale.
But it gives me what I need to get the wanted, "traditional" behaviour back:
add »--time-style='posix-long-iso'« to my ls aliases in .bashrc.

Thank you for pointing this out.
hk47


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