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Bug #50059 strototime() incorrectly parses first sunday of Nov 2009
Submitted: 2009-11-03 03:19 UTC Modified: 2009-11-04 02:36 UTC
From: herrnoel at gmail dot com Assigned:
Status: Not a bug Package: Date/time related
PHP Version: 5.2.11 OS: Linux/Debian 5.0.3
Private report: No CVE-ID: None
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 [2009-11-03 03:19 UTC] herrnoel at gmail dot com 
Description:
------------
Actual php version is latest from debian stable: PHP 5.2.6-1+lenny3

When using strtotime() for some really handy english parsing, it works great EXCEPT for the first day of the month.

The format is as follows:

[1-4] [day of week] [month] [year]

If the day of the week is the first day of the month, this will return the date starting one week ahead of the first day of the month. Otherwise, the behavior is as expected.

This is repeatable for all months.  If you leave out the initial digit, the broken first day of the month works, but then you must use 1 to indicate the 2nd instance of that day and so on.

Reproduce code:
---------------
echo date('Y-m-d', strtotime('1 thu oct 2009')); # first day of month
echo date('Y-m-d', strtotime('1 fri oct 2009')); # second day of month
echo date('Y-m-d', strtotime('1 sun nov 2009')); # first day of month
echo date('Y-m-d', strtotime('2 sun nov 2009')); # second sunday of month (sunday is the first day of month)


Expected result:
----------------
2009-10-01
2009-10-02
2009-11-01
2009-11-08


Actual result:
--------------
2009-10-08
2009-10-02
2009-11-08
2009-11-15

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 [2009-11-03 10:44 UTC] jani@php.net 
1. Too old and wrong PHP version. (we only support what we release, not some badly patched binaries from 3rd party)

2. This is not a bug, strotime() is not an AI which can parse any crap you pass it. Please ask support on the right forum.
 [2009-11-03 23:01 UTC] herrnoel at gmail dot com 
1) OK that's a sort of fair point.  I'll see if I can drum up some access to a compiled install...

2) strtotime() is a wrapper to GNU's date function right?

http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html#Day-of-week-items

I believe this is correct syntax.

"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. "

The ordinal spellings of numbers are just aliases to integers -- I prefer the terser, numeric format.
 [2009-11-03 23:52 UTC] derick@php.net 
No, it is not a wrapper around anything, but it's still not a bug. There is lots of logic involved here but that belongs in the docs (and there is already an issue open for that I think).
 [2009-11-04 02:36 UTC] herrnoel at gmail dot com 
OK thanks for the clarification.  Yes the docs could be improved for this particular function on php.net.

Interestingly enough, I found a syntax that seems to work:

strtotime('+0 week sun nov 2009');
strtotime('+1 week sun nov 2009');
strtotime('-1 week sun nov 2009');
etc.

This seems to yield valid timestamps and gives me an easy integer based interval incrementer.

I'm parsing ical RRULE sets.  Believe me I'm grateful for this function's existence.
 
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