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Request #29879 strtotime() should return false instead of -1 on failure
Submitted: 2004-08-29 00:50 UTC Modified: 2005-08-11 20:04 UTC
Votes:1
Avg. Score:4.0 ± 0.0
Reproduced:1 of 1 (100.0%)
Same Version:0 (0.0%)
Same OS:0 (0.0%)
From: info at peter-thomassen dot de Assigned: derick (profile)
Status: Closed Package: Feature/Change Request
PHP Version: 5.1 OS: any
Private report: No CVE-ID: None
View Developer Edit
 [2004-08-29 00:50 UTC] info at peter-thomassen dot de 
Description:
------------
If an invalid time is specified, strtotime() returns -1. 
 
Because -1 is ambiguous (it could also mean 1969-12-31 
23:59:59 UTC), I request to return (bool)false on failure. 
 
BTW: 
http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual/html_chapter/tar_7.html#SEC117 
which is mentioned in the docs allows a number preceded by 
an '@' for the time argument to represent seconds since 
the epoch. This results in an error -- shall I report 
another bug for that? 
 
Thanks! 

Reproduce code:
---------------
<?php
var_dump(strtotime('invalid'));
?>

Expected result:
----------------
bool(false) 

Actual result:
--------------
int(-1)

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 [2004-08-29 19:01 UTC] iliaa@php.net 
This change would break backwards compatibility.
 [2004-08-29 20:15 UTC] info at peter-thomassen dot de 
That's right, but I think -- since PHP5 is not that 
established to avoid any minor changes -- you can keep the 
old behaviour if zend.ze1_compatibility_mode is set to On 
and otherwise use more meaningful return values, can't 
you? 
 
I find it kind of sad if there wouldn't be any possibility 
to do proper date calculations, but another would be 
overkill ...
 [2004-08-30 08:17 UTC] derick@php.net 
This is going to be changed for 5.1, which will have new datetime parse/handling stuff.
 
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