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Bug #72425 strtotime() should return false when string contains white space
Submitted: 2016-06-15 20:42 UTC Modified: 2022-05-13 14:05 UTC
Votes:1
Avg. Score:3.0 ± 0.0
Reproduced:0 of 0 (0.0%)
From: alex at itc77 dot com Assigned: cmb (profile)
Status: Duplicate Package: Date/time related
PHP Version: 7.0.7 OS:
Private report: No CVE-ID: None
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 [2016-06-15 20:42 UTC] alex at itc77 dot com
Description:
------------
strtotime() doesn't return false when string contains white space

According to the documentation white space should be treated as invalid format and  return false.

Test script:
---------------
strtotime(" ")


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 [2016-06-15 20:44 UTC] alex at itc77 dot com
Please accept this patch:

https://github.com/php/php-src/pull/615
 [2016-06-16 11:34 UTC] cmb@php.net
I can confirm this behavior: <https://3v4l.org/HNaaY>.

> According to the documentation white space should be treated as
> invalid format and return false.

Where is this documented? That would actually be wrong; consider

  strtotime('2016-06-16 11:23')

which is supposed to be acceptable.
 [2016-06-16 22:46 UTC] mtanalin at yandex dot ru
To cmb@php.net:

Obviously, invalid should be whitespace-ONLY arguments (in other words, becoming empty string after `trim()`), not arguments _containing_ whitespace.

'2016-06-16 11:23' does not become an empty (zero-length) string after trimming whitespace.
 [2016-06-17 09:35 UTC] cmb@php.net
> Obviously, invalid should be whitespace-ONLY arguments (in other
> words, becoming empty string after `trim()`), not arguments
> _containing_ whitespace.

Indeed, thanks. However, where is this documented?
 [2016-06-21 22:10 UTC] mtanalin at yandex dot ru
To cmb@php.net:

It looks like just common sense that whitespace is not a valid date or time — because it’s not a date, it’s…, well, whitespace. ;-)

The “Date Formats” page [1] does not mention whitespace at all, the “Time Formats” page [2] lists space (`[ \t]`) as a possible value, but I’m not sure it is not about just a non-self-contained _token_ intended to be a part of a full valid date/time string containing _not_ just whitespace.

Anyway, interpreting whitespace as a current date looks confusing, so this behavior probably deserves changing.

[1] http://php.net/manual/en/datetime.formats.date.php
[2] http://php.net/manual/en/datetime.formats.time.php
 [2016-06-22 12:58 UTC] cmb@php.net
-Summary: strtotime() doesn't return false when string contains white space +Summary: strtotime() should return false when string contains white space -Type: Bug +Type: Feature/Change Request
 [2016-06-22 12:58 UTC] cmb@php.net
Thanks for pointing out the `space` time format. It does look like
to be intended to be a self-contained format, as several date
formats *contain* whitespace (for instance, `Textual month and
day`). And actually, that is quite contrary to what the reported
wrote.

> Anyway, interpreting whitespace as a current date looks
> confusing, so this behavior probably deserves changing.

I don't argue that accepting whitespace only as date time format
is rather doubtful, but as often is the case with *changes*, this
change would break BC. This is particularly bad, because the
whitespace has been documented to be allowed. So, in a strict
sense, this is not a bug. I'm changing to feature request.
 [2018-08-14 21:06 UTC] cmb@php.net
-Status: Open +Status: Duplicate -Type: Feature/Change Request +Type: Bug -Assigned To: +Assigned To: cmb
 [2018-08-14 21:06 UTC] cmb@php.net
Oops, disregard my former comment, since it is nonsense.

Anyhow, this is a duplicate of bug #66486.
 [2022-05-13 14:05 UTC] derick@php.net
I'm closing this (and the duplicate), as I am confused about this. Please open a new ticket at https://github.com/php/php-src/issues if this is still a pressing issue.
 
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